This Elegant and Philosophical Work is Expressed in Subtle Poetry

Miami, FL – WEBWIRE – Friday, November 20, 2020

“The Stars of Earth: New and Selected Poems” by Emily Grosholz

Emily Grosholz’s “The Stars of Earth: New and Selected Poems” combines accounts of compassionate awareness in her far-reaching travels and the importance of love and friendship, with sometimes esoteric thoughts from her study of philosophy. She also captures the brief, beautiful moments of family life. Her four children made a significant impact on her lifetime journey, recorded, for example, in one son’s pleasure in puddle-splashing, and another’s in learning a new language, and her daughter’s effortless ability to sing. Her husband’s peaceful snoring brings back one glimpse of Mount Fuji and her memories of their first year together bring back the Amalfi Coast. And her study of philosophy, mathematics, and the sciences show up here and there as metaphors and ideas. Her masterwork is both heart-warming and encouraging.

Given the author’s decades of work in philosophy of mathematics and science, which culminated in winning the Fernando Gil International Prize in Philosophy of Science, this book of poems challenger many boundaries. Working with the Bridges: Mathematics and the Arts community over many years, she makes math and science accessible (and sometimes funny) in her poems and brings their insights into stars and chemicals and living things both in the wild or on the fields into relation with us, our past and our future. Emily Grosholz tries in her poems to bring daily emotions and a deeper longing for wisdom together, looking for what a well-lived life might be and the purpose of life.

“The Stars of Earth: New and Selected Poems” also includes meditations on friendship as well as solitary moments in the lovely marketplaces of Paris and Rome, in the majestic woodlands of Greece and Pennsylvania, and by the rivers of Argentina and California. It includes a wonderful drawing by Farhad Ostovani, whom she met through Yves Bonnefoy. Her poems about motherhood and childhood have been translated into five languages and music and songs. The reader will be enlightened and encouraged by this journey that was sometimes favorable and sometimes challenging: life is to be treasured, whether one is dealing with the good of evils, as the work of Wangari Maathai, one of the poet’s most admired people, show us. She would like her book “The Stars of Earth: New and Selected Poems” to help reflect life and love.

Book Details
Publisher: Able Muse Press / Word Galaxy
Publication Date: October 16, 2017
Pages: 320
Click the link to buy the book at Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Stars-Earth-New-Selected-Poems/dp/177349001X/

About the Author

Emily Grosholz was born in the suburbs of Philadelphia and attended the University of Chicago and Yale University. Since 1979 she has taught at the Pennsylvania State University, where she is now Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of Philosophy, African American Studies, and English. Her first book of poetry, The River Painter, appeared in 1984; her most recent book, Childhood, has been translated into Japanese, Italian and French, and has raised $2500 for UNICEF. She has lived in France, Germany, and the UK and traveled to Japan, Russia, Costa Rica, and the Mediterranean, and the Baltic. She and her husband, Robert Edwards, raised four children in State College, Pennsylvania, on the flanks of the Tussey Ridge, countryside that they and their neighbors, with the ClearWater Conservancy, are working to protect and preserve. Her book, Great Circles: The Transits of Mathematics and Poetry, will be published in 2018 by Springer. “The Stars of Earth: New and Selected Poems” (Word Galaxy Press, 2017) is her eighth book of poetry.