The Rub

Poetry. Winner of the 13th Annual Elixir Press Poetry Award. "'At night when the trees are mascara / sketches against the weeping sky. / I fingerpaint on a rented wall,' Sophia Kartsonis says in one poem, revealing in a few lines the crucial concerns in this wonderful book: myths balanced against truths, fairytales and biblical references that illuminate the present, surfaces that are bright or dark revealing the opposite underneath, all counterpointed between the cosmic sky and the everyday rented wall. In one poem she can put herself in Sleeping Beauty's room, shift in the next poem to Ophelia, then to an elaboration of the dish and spoon nursery rhyme. What all this reveals is a sharp intelligence and wondrous imagination that expresses itself as a love for the world this poet operates in, and the mythic contexts assure it is 'the way one loves a firefly, / a star, any sparkle in a night sky. / Tenderly, and from a great distance,' which is to say the distance of a master poet."—Richard Jackson