Melissa Carroll

Body of Starlight Melissa Carroll

In Body of Starlight, Carroll explores the female body and its connection to the cosmos, shirking conventional ideas of beauty and physicality with sometimes tragic, often witty meditations on Eastern philosophy and Western superficiality. Characterizing womanhood as both supremely divine and hopelessly mortal, Carroll chronicles her experiences, observations, and opinions with intimate detail.

Poet Maggie Smith says, "Body of Starlight is wise, quick-witted, and fearless. Clearly concerned with both the physical and the mystical, these are poems of muscle and bone; poems of shadow and light. Full of music and masterfully enjambed, Carroll's poems sing. 'This planetary song...rings too in our molecules, little songs, //sonnets in our teeth...' Lean in, body and soul. Listen. These poems have things to teach us."