InThe 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 flowers 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 ofgender performance are replaced with bold vulnerability: paradoxes of power and surrender transmute the speakers understanding of suffering, desire, and the soul.

The voice inThe Roseis wry and bare,approaching the connection between erotic love and spirituality with humor. Investigating war, maternity, violent sensuality, and the roleof language in magical acts, Reines is unafraid touncover the secret / & terrible shovelings / Of love, and the result is a bloody and pulsing, sexy and unabashed bloom.

Paperback | 96 pages | 6.00″ x 8.95″