The Cosmopolitan
Poems by Donna Stonecipher

“Donna Stonecipher has opened up the prose poem so that it is no longer a box in which one pours their little story. In place of the false securities offered by narrative, she explores the ‘spectacularly faceted chit’ of being alive, of being displaced and drifting, of being lost and found among the many languages, stories, cries for help and love that any one of us encounters. Her writing is full of tenderness, sympathy, and acute observation. Reading The Cosmopolitan is akin to following a bird in flight; it moves at different speeds, dives, rises, rolls, swoops, and floats, and is always something to behold. She deserves far greater recognition than this award.”—John Yau, National Poetry Series judge

These ornate miniature travelogues, filled with adventure and philosophical intrigue, spin tales of traveling in a world both romanticized and politicized, a world made miniature by globalization and haunted by the figure of the cosmopolitan, who is aware of its saturated history, yet inspired by the knowledge that nostalgia is merely “memory decayed to sugar.”