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Susan Gubernat publishes new collection of poems with cover by Grace Munakata

Book cover showing two girls playing.

Book cover showing two girls playing.

  • April 7, 2011 9:00am

“Analog House,” a collection of poetry by Susan Gubernat, associate professor of English, is now available from Finishing Line Press of Georgetown, KY.

The chapbook is a series of unrhymed sonnets based on the theme of a pre-digital (analog) world, with a title that plays on the idea of metaphor as a literary analogy.

“While the poems are based on "things" of this world, of childhood, especially, I hope it is as metaphysical as it is physical,” said Gubernat.

She is particularly proud to have “Sisters,” a detail from a painting by colleague Grace Munakata, professor of art, on the cover.

Poet Patty Seyburn writes of “Analog House,” “ Each line begs to be read again, and yields more fruit each time,” while Penelope Seambly Schott, another poet and English professor, writes, “This skillful collection of sonnets imbues physical objects with emotional weight.”

Some of the poems in the collection originally appeared in "Michigan Quarterly" and in "Pleiades."

Gubernat, who came to CSUEB in 2001 by way of New York and Newark, N.J., had her first book, “Flesh” (Helicon Nine Editions: 1999), win the Marianne Moore Prize, having been characterized as a “stunning debut” (Robert Phillips) and a “refreshing new voice in American poetry” (Carolyn Kizer).

She has been awarded a New York State Arts Council poetry fellowship, as well as residencies at Yaddo, MacDowell, and the Millay Colony. Among her other grants and awards are the Rossley New Voice Award in 2000, the Washington Prize (WordWorks), and a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship in Women’s Studies.

Gubernat earned her MFA in poetry from the Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa.

She is the librettist for the opera, “Korczak’s Orphans,” in collaboration with composer Adam Silverman, which had a workshop premiere by Real Time Opera Company at the Lebanon Opera House in May 2003, and was performed by the New York City Opera in its series VOX 2004: Showcasing New American Composers.

DD

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