LSU Press Publishes New Collection From Alumni Poet Lisa Ampleman

LSU Press Publishes New Collection From Alumni Poet Lisa Ampleman

With Valentine's Day looming on the horizon, LSU Press is publishing Romances by Lisa Ampleman, MFA ’04, a new collection of poetry exploring the literary tradition of courtly love. 

 

“Instead of bachelor knights bemoaning their allegedly cruel beloveds, Romances emphasizes the voices of female troubadours, along with those of historical figures such as Dante’s wife, Petrarch’s Laura, and Anne Boleyn,” according to the LSU Press announcement. “Ampleman also incorporates the work of the Italian Renaissance poet Gaspara Stampa, mentioned in Rilke’s Duino Elegies, through a series of adaptations of her verse. Elsewhere, a contemporary sonnet sequence dedicated to Courtney Love shows the 1990s grunge rocker as subject, object, performer, and mother. As her poems reflect on popular romantic ideas about the past, the means by which elegies romanticize the dead, or the conventional romance of a happy marriage, Ampleman addresses a range of romantic entanglements: courtly and commonplace, sentimental and prosaic, toxic and mutual.”

 

Poet David Wojahn adds that “Ampleman merges formal elegance with punk sass and offers both a witty debunking of romantic love in all of its manifestations and heartfelt expressions of ardor. There’s consummate ingeniousness here—and formidable promise.”

 

Ampleman is the author of another full-length poetry collection—Full Cry, winner of the Stevens Manuscript Competition sponsored by the National Federation of State Poetry Societies—and of the chapbook I’ve Been Collecting This to Tell You, winner of the Wick chapbook competition. Her poems have appeared on Poetry Daily and Verse Daily, and in literary journals, including 32 Poems, Cave Wall, Image, Kenyon Review Online, Massachusetts Review, Natural Bridge, New Ohio Review, New South, Notre Dame Review, and Poetry.