Margo Berdeshevsky

Born in New York City, MARGO BERDESHEVSKY has traveled the world. She often lives and writes in Paris. Her LATEST book is KNEEL SAID THE NIGHT (a hybrid book in half-notes,) *from SUNDRESS PUBLICATIONS.) Her most recent poetry book is "BEFORE THE DROUGHT" FROM GLASS LYRE PRESS. (IA finalist for the National Poetry Series.) A new poetry collection, "IT IS STILL BEAUTIFUL TO HEAR THE HEART BEAT" is forthcoming from Salmon Poetry. Her earlier collection is "BETWEEN SOUL & STONE" (published by Sheep Meadow.) Her book of illustrated stories, "BEAUTIFUL SOON ENOUGH" (FC2/ University of Alabama Press) received the 1st Ronald Sukenick Award for Innovative Fiction. Her poetry collection, "BUT A PASSAGE IN WILDERNESS," was also published by Sheep Meadow Press in 2007. Praise for KNEEL SAID THE NIGHT: "Composed of lyric essays, line broken poems, revamped fairy tales, erotic myths, and histories clothed in see-through shifts, wearing Eau Sauvage men’s cologne, Kneel Said the Night: a hybrid book in half notes, is a lush, authoritative masterwork. This Red Riding Hood gathers flowers and details in her basket, and generates revivified archetypes—"menstrual-colored canary,” “full paunch moon”—that can only emerge from an imagination fed by solitude and desire (and Paris). “I’m the woman who asks how close is death, how near is God,” Berdeshevsky writes, and in this intimate, audacious collection, the answer is very close, and very, very near. —DIANE SEUSS/ Pulitzer Prize recipient for "frank: sonnets") Praise for KNEEL SAID THE NIGHT: "Margo Berdeshevsky’s ravishing originality and enchanting voice, which I have long admired, are on stunning display in her latest book. Kneel Said the Night is an unmitigated joy. —ROBERT OLEN BUTLER/ Pulitzer Prize recipient PRAISE for "BEFORE THE DROUGHT": "Before the Drought is a lyric meditation on corporeal existence, suffused with atavistic spirit and set in historical as well as cosmic time , a work of radical suffering and human indifference but also sensual transport. The tutelary spirits of these poems are the feminine principle, and a flock of messengers that include blue heron, ibis, phoenix, egret, and blood’s hummingbird. In the surround we find ourselves in the magical world of a floating balcony, and a field of cellos, but it is a world in peril, now and in the time to come, on the night of the Paris massacres and in a poisoned future . In the City of Light, Berdeshevsky writes poems commensurate with her vision, poems that know to ask How close is death, how near is God? Hers is a book to read at the precipice on which we stand." — CAROLYN FORCHÉ The Brooklyn Rail called "Before the Drought one of the `BEST POETRY BOOKS OF 2017. Praise for "BETWEEN SOUL & STONE": "There is in Margo Berdeshevsky's work a rare persistence of the lyric voice, used with a sense of ecstasy & grief almost religious in its evocations. Absolutely modern & fearlessly romantic by turns, the poems circle the rich & threatened corners of the living planet & travel further into places marked by mythic & oneiric time...Berdeshevsky emerges, fully empowered, as the maker of a new poetry that pushes voice & image toward creation of a world 'barbaric, vast and wild' that Diderot once saw as marker of what all poetry must be." (JEROME ROTHENBERG)] "...Her..."Between Soul and Stone,", is incredible. This may sound trite, but I can't help but identify Berdeshevsky's work as being like a gossamer web: intensely beautiful, painstakingly crafted into textually dense strands of poetic light. This is not an easy book to read. It demands, itrewards, every ounce of your reading attention. It is also deeply transformative. If nothing else, you'll emerge from your reading with a more exalted sense of what beauty means in our lives. That someone can think, and write, like this is a gift to us all..." [from rave review (Powell's Books Blog) by CHRIS FAATZ.] Each page [of "Between Soul & Stone"] is immaculate as Margo Berdeshevsky wanders with fire from George Herbert to Cassandra to the silence of the sun before the wounded moon: "The pigeon has found a crippled / moon who will not stand again for days. Has / found water's silence / and the winter wren trusts me." Her ways are the fantastic, the pathos of "love's famine," and a mastery of emotion..."BETWEEN SOUL & STONE" is a book of measured splendors. (WILLIS BARNSTONE ) Praise for "BEAUTIFUL SOON ENOUGH": Margo Berdeshevsky understands the diabolical complexity of the human heart, and how eros is a form of intelligence as well as a drive. Writing with lyric accuracy and necessary forgiveness about the turmoils of love, she also declares the 8th Deadly Sin: the refusal of intense experience. (SVEN BIRKERTS) "Margo Berdeshevsky's "Beautiful Soon Enough" is a thrillingly cutting-edge work of photos and short short stories flowing together into an extended erotic dream that limns the inner lives of women deeply yearning for connection and authenticity. This is a splendid book by a fine poet turning into an equally fine fiction writer." (ROBERT OLEN BUTLER ) Of her earliest poetry collection, JEROME ROTHENBERG wrote,"With the publication of BUT A PASSAGE IN WILDERNESS, Berdeshevsky emerges, fully empowered, as the maker of a new poetry that pushes voice & image toward creation of a world 'barbaric, vast and wild" that Diderot once saw as marker of what all poetry must be.' " "Brevity... lushness and lyricism... This is a writer who understands the power of language." Rave review (Poetry International) for Margo Berdeshevsky's story collection BEAUTIFUL SOON ENOUGH. Graduated from the High School of Performing Arts, attended Northwestern and New York Universities, she quit for a role in her first Off Broadway play; trained as an actress by Lee Strasberg, she performed in world premieres of Harold Pinter's "The Basement" & "Tea Party," David Hare's "Slag," worked in the companies of Lincoln Center and Joseph Papp's Public Theatre, toured the USA as Ophelia, and was nominated for a television Emmy award, for a country western drama in which she had her head in an oven, but was saved by a neighbor who prayed for her. * "It Is Still Beautiful To Hear The Heart Beat" is forthcoming in 2022 from Salmon Poetry. ** Review of “Beautiful Soon Enough” in Necessary Fiction http://necessaryfiction.com/reviews/BeautifulSoonEnough ______________________________________________________ * Pls visit her WEBSITE: http://margoberdeshevsky.com and her BLOG: http://margoberdeshevsky.blogspot.com/ Go back Save biography