Five Women

For fans of Donald Justice, Julie Kane and Louise Gluck.

Winner of the Hidden River Arts' Willow Run Poetry Book Award, Five Women explores the evolving interior lives of five women from different historical eras. The first four-- a woman in ancient Sparta, a medieval anchoress, a young accuser during the Salem witch trials, and a pioneer schoolteacher-- all operate outside the norms of their societies, speaking to us in a range of poetic forms and disparate voices. The fifth speaker is a contemporary woman, documenting a woman's current challenges in marriage, career and childrearing. The poems, taken together, link these lives to one another, and to the lives of so many women, both past and present, whose authentic selves stay hidden from the world.

Each grouping of poems presents an extended narrative of a single life, told in a roughly chronological way- though the start and end points are different for each character in the volume. For some, the journey is between birth and death; for others, it is between despair and happiness. Cohen moves between strict poetic forms (sestinas, sonnets, etc.) and metrical free verse.