Blue Venus: Poems

In Blue Venus, Lisa Russ Spaar explores the intimate relationship between the sensual and the sacred. Her nocturnal poems weave themselves into the very fabric of private fervor—lyric, sexual, spiritual—beginning with "Dusk" and continuing on until "Dawn."Fierce and giving, Spaar's exquisite verse isolates essential moments of vulnerability and wonder. A series on insomnia—in the voices of some notable insomniacs—is among the most moving extended sequences in recent memory. Elsewhere, she…