In this subtle and candid collection, Lisa Ampleman mixes contemporary elements and historical materials as she speaks back to the literary tradition of courtly love. Instead of bachelor knights bemoaning their allegedly cruel beloveds, Romances emphasizes the voices of female troubadours, along with those of historical figures such as Dante's wife, Petrarch's Laura, and Anne Boleyn. Ampleman also incorporates the work of the Italian Renaissance poet Gaspara Stampa, mentioned in Rilke's Duino Elegies, through a series of adaptations of her verse. Elsewhere, a contemporary sonnet sequence dedicated to Courtney Love shows the 1990s grunge rocker as subject, object, performer, and mother. As her poems reflect on popular romantic ideas about the past, the means by which elegies romanticize the dead, or the conventional romance of a happy marriage, Ampleman addresses a range of romantic entanglements: courtly and commonplace, sentimental and prosaic, toxic and mutual.

Author: Lisa Ampleman
Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: LSU Press
Published: 02/05/2020
Pages: 94
Weight: 0.28lbs
Size: 8.50h x 5.50w x 0.23d
ISBN: 9780807171196

About the Author
Lisa Ampleman is the author of Full Cry. Her poetry has appeared in the Kenyon Review Online, Image, the Massachusetts Review, Poetry, and elsewhere. She lives in Ohio, where she is the managing editor of the Cincinnati Review and the poetry series editor for Acre Books.