Dandarians

“Lee Ann Roripaugh mobilizes the Japanese haibun to investigate the dialectic of trauma and care that gives rise to a particularly luminous poetic sensibility. The compound fractures of history are continuously mended by the grace of this writer’s wit and her openness to the shocks of beauty that surround us. Dandarians is a work of beauty and resilience.”

“Pleasure and danger and recollected frustration, the prismatic color of the Great Plains, the allure of exoplanets, the generative powers that wait in a child’s solecisms and mispronunciations: those are only some of my favorite things in Lee Ann Roripaugh’s best book yet. Here are pages to cherish simply for the way they make up words, or put words together, but here, too, is the resonant voice of a newly confident author.”

“In Dandarians, Lee Ann Roripaugh’s lovely, lyrical wordplay reveals its origins in political and familial dissent. She guides readers through dangerous territory, where clouds ‘dervish off the sagebrushed plains’ and ‘strangeness makes me a moving target.’ Reading feels like breaking rules, rules that separate us from others. Believe this poet when she tells you what she knows.”

“I am completely in awe of and in love with Dandarians, of the perfection of her images, the intensity of Lee Ann Roripaugh’s language, the glittering and gorgeous union of these two. She writes, ‘Sun’s cold high beam glaring everywhere—ricocheting off snow, stretching sky’s dome like a taut blue balloon, sluicing in through every window.’ I stall and stutter, a willing captive to her phrases.”