Colleen J. McElroy is professor emeritus of English and creative writing at the University of Washington and the former editor of the Seattle Review. She is the author of eight previous poetry collections, most recently Sleeping with the Moon, for which she received a 2008 PEN/Oakland National Literary Award. She has also received the Before Columbus American Book Award, two Fulbright Research Fellowships, two NEA Fellowships (in both fiction and poetry), a DuPont Visiting Scholar Fellowship, and a Rockefeller Fellowship. (Author photo by Ingrid Pape-Sheldon)
“The always smart and effective poetry of Colleen McElroy becomes seductive in Here I Throw Down My Heart. On topics from marriage to the military to ageing, McElroy's poems are film noir voodoo magic.”
—Diane Wakoski
“Here I Throw Down My Heart is amazing. . . . I’m especially drawn to the [women] warrior poems. That series is magnificent in its tearless awfulness with that note of sweet, appalled regret at the end. One of McElroy’s very best, I think. Having just read about women in combat in the New York Times recently . . . these poems yanked every sad nerve. Kafka says art should mangle us, and McElroy has done it.”
—Valerie Trueblood
“‘We will cross where the borders are porous.’ In McElroy’s Here I Throw Down My Heart, meaning beats a tattoo in four distinct chambers, adding up, magically, to pure connection. Slavery's echo in modern times, what it means to be a woman in battle, hunger and greed, and a paradise up for grabs . . . ‘if our purse is fat enough.’ These are significant poems that address our complex human condition, in language that illuminates with frankness and beauty.”
—Katherine Hastings
University of Pittsburgh Press
