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The Rose

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What to expect

In The Rose, award-winning poet Ariana Reines navigates the intersection of power and surrender. Drawing on the history of "romance" as the troubadours knew it and the titular flower's ancient allegories for sexuality and mystery, Reines plunges into feminine archetypes to explore masculine pain: "I have always liked helpless / & terrible men because they break my mind." In these poems, inherited ideologies of gender performance are replaced with bold vulnerability: paradoxes of power and surrender transmute the speaker's understanding of suffering, desire, and the soul.



The voice in The Rose is wry and bare, approaching the connection between erotic love and spirituality with humor. Investigating war, maternity, violent sensuality, and the role of language in magical acts, Reines is unafraid to uncover the "secret / & terrible shovelings / Of love," and the result is a bloody and pulsing, sexy and unabashed bloom.
Author Ariana Reines
Narrator Ariana Reines
Duration 1 hours and 43 minutes
Release Date
ISBN 9781696618540
Format Audiobook
Publisher Highbridge Company
Genre Poetry
Availability AU, GB, IE, US

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