The Royal Baker's Daughter [Paperback]

Barbara Goldberg (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 19, 2008 | ISBN-10: 0299227243 | ISBN-13: 978-0299227241 | Edition: 1

Winner of the 2008 Felix Pollak Prize in Poetry, selected by David St. John

 

These poems, at once elegant and earthy, reveal the inner workings of the human psyche and show us that sometimes the best defense against terror is making mischief. The Royal Baker’s Daughter was raised on a diet of stone soup and the occasional leftover royal treat. This leaves her with an appetite for authenticity. With nothing but her two deft hands to guide her, she embarks on a journey into the dark forest, “where sticks and stones and absolutes reign and nothing, even sin, is original.”

 

Best Fall book from the Montserrat Review

Editorial Reviews

Review

“In Barbara Goldberg’s marvelous collection, The Royal Baker’s Daughter, cooking itself stands as a metaphor for devotion to the fruits of the earth and to the creation of human hopes. Never didactic and always scrupulous, these poems stand as a kind of testimony to the transformative alchemy of both cuisine and the natural world. Barbara Goldberg understands that, at times, only a sense of fable allows us to fully understand our own shifting, incomprehensible lives. Within and against the constellation of the family, with special resonance given to the presiding presence of the father, these poems show us how we sometimes choose to devour—over and over again, often relishing their texture—those very wounds that have made us who we are and what we have come to believe.”—David St. John, Felix Pollak Prize judge

 

“The Royal Baker’s Daughter is a remarkable book of poems. It explores, in familial, historical, and global contexts, the idea of boundaries and conflict, connection and redemption. These poems in a way remind us that all human relationships are negotiations—and that the integrity with which we navigate through them is often the only thing anchoring us to a comprehensible place.” —Laura Orem, The Montserrat Review

From the Inside Flap

Barbara Goldberg is one of my very favorite poets for her humor, her absolute of the language and sound, the reverberating echoes in her poems, sonic, soulful, literary, biblical. 
--Peter Stitt --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 88 pages
• Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press; 1 edition (February 19, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0299227243
• ISBN-13: 978-0299227241
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,765,031 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Barbara Goldberg, raised in Forest Hills, New York, graudated from Mount Holyoke College in philosophy. She is the author of four prize-winning books, most recently, The Royal Baker's Daughter, winner of the 2008 Felix Pollak Poetry Prize, selected by David St. John. Other books include Marvelous Pursuits, Cautionary Tales and Berta Broadfoot and Pepin the Short: A Merovinian Romance. Along with the Israeli poet Moshe Dor, she edited and translated After the First Rain: Israeli Poems on War and Peace, with a foreword by Shimon Peres; and Witter Bynner Award-winning The Stones Remember: Native Israeli Poetry. In addition, with Dor, she translated The Fire Stays in Red: Poems of Ronny Someck. Her work has appeared in Best American Poetry, the Gettysburg Review and the Paris Review. Awards include two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, grants from the Maryland State Arts Council, the Armand G. Erpf Award from Columbia University's Translation Center as well as national awards in fiction, feature writing and speechwriting. A former seniot speechwriter at AARPV, she is currently a visiting writer in American University's MFA program. She lives in Chevy Chase, Maryland.