Earlier Works
Fiercely intimate in its honesty and fiercely formal in its measures, Molly Peacock's fourth collection shows the poet at the height of her powers.
Using her trademark rhymes, characteristic humor, and daring sexual and psychological openness, Peacock intertwines at least four types of original love in her poems: a narrative of meeting again and marrying in midlife; the tangled knot of mother/daughter love; a quest for the spiritual; and finally a vibrant love of the self, triumphantly recovered after childhood abuse.
Original Love
Take Heart
Raw Haven
And Live Apart.
What People Are Saying
“Ms. Peacock uses rhyme and meter as a way to cut reality into sizable chunks, the sense of the poem spilling from line to line, breathlessly.”
— The New York Times Book Review
“Peacock’s poems are filled with little formal miracles, the sort of verbal dazzlement we grew up on but have starved for through the barren days of the plain style.”
— Georgia Review
“She has a luxuriantly sensual imagination – and an equally sensual feel for the language. In mood her poems range from high-spirited whimsy to bemused reflection. Whatever the subject, rich music follows the tap of Molly Peacock’s baton.”
— David Lehman, The Washington Post
"Accomplished and witty, this anatomy of 'original' love is not for the fainthearted; it's for those who believe it is still possible to feel deeply."