Egil Is Baffled by Grief

In the tradition of Jorge Luis Borges, W.H. Auden, and J.R.R. Tolkien, Nancy Jasper finds poetic inspiration in the medieval Icelandic sagas. Her terse and direct word pictures open doors and windows into the world of these violent, complex tales. We sit like the shapeshifting swallow, listening, and are changed. We wander, like the bear, out of a fairy tale and into the mind-cunning, lucid, and fearful-of a mythmaker. Like the trickster, we are tricked into seeing the sagas anew. "The poet," Jasper reminds us, "is formed from spittle, the honey mixed with blood." Nancy Marie Brown, Author of Song of the Vikings: Snorri and the Making of Norse Myths Nancy Jasper is a Pushcart Prize nominee. She writes with playfulness and intensity, with unexpected imagery and sly verbal textures. She takes these stories at odd angles, finding her way toward their complicated heart. Nancy's work has appeared in micro-chapbooks, academic journals, an anthology of urban poetry, and a publication of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Her poems and essays have been heard on the Rhode Island affiliate of National Public Radio.