Kathleen Rooney "Where Are the Snows: Poems"

Kathleen Rooney's latest book, a poetry collection called Where Are the Snows comes out September 1st and we are celebrating its release at The Book Cellar! Kathleen will be joined by two authors, Timothy Moore and Jessica Anne, who will also be reading from their recent releases. 

About the Book:

In prose poems whose lines strive to be as interesting, alive, and determined to connect as a YouTube comment, and in the aphoristic and observational vein of the best stand-up comedy, Kathleen Rooney's Where Are the Snows is a funny-sad send-up of the absurdity of existence.

Where Are the Snows takes its title from the famous refrain of Franðcois Villon's 15th century poem 'Ballad of the Ladies of Times Past.' Like that poem, the book functions, among other things, as an ubi sunt, Latin for 'Where are they?' as in 'Where are the ones who came before us?' -- the beautiful, the strong, the virtuous, all of them? In keeping with that long tradition, these poems offer a way to think about life's transience, its beauty, its absurdity, and of course its mortality. Allusive and associative, anti-capitalist and unapologetically political, aligned somewhere between comedy and anger, this poetry juxtaposes the triumphs and tragedies (mostly tragedies) of our current age with those of history, and-by wondering 'Where are they?'-explores the questions of where we are now and where we might be going.

About the Author:

Kathleen Rooney is a founding editor of Rose Metal Press, a publisher of literary work in hybrid genres, and a founding member of Poems While You Wait, a team of poets and their typewriters who compose commissioned poetry on demand. She is the author, most recently, of the novels Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk and Cher Ami and Major Whittlesey. Her latest collection Where Are the Snows, winner of the XJ Kennedy Prize, is coming out from Texas Review Press in September 2022. She teaches at DePaul and her next novel, From Dust to Stardust, will be published by Lake Union Press in Fall of 2023.

About the Co-Readers:

Jessica Anne is the author of A Manual for Nothing (Noemi Press) and Sex With My Family forthcoming from Long Day Press. She’s an alumna of the Neo-Futurist ensemble and teaches at SAIC.

Timothy Moore has work published in McSweeney's, Midnight Breakfast, and Apogee, among others. He is a Kundiman and Luminarts Fellow and has had a Hinge Arts Residency. His upcoming chapbook from Long Day Press, "I Will Teach You Retribution," is forthcoming in 2023.