Diane Arbus Goes Shopping - by Eve Wood (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

What did Jackson Pollock say to the tree that killed him? Or the wives of Henry XIII behind closed doors? What if Virginia Woolf hadn't killed herself during WWII? Would Abraham Lincoln have anything to impart to Americans at this divisive political moment?

Humorous, lustful, breathtaking, and insightful, Eve Wood's four-part collection of prose poems and epistolary fiction imagines the hidden lives (and deaths) of contemporary artists and the women who married Henry XIII, as well as rendering the coded amorous exchanges between Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West and pulling wisdom from under Abraham Lincoln's hat. Eve Wood takes her subjects beyond the looking glass, turns history in on itself and sees our contemporary moment reflected there. Laughing along the way, surprised by her discoveries, we find strength and expression as a panacea for dark times.

Illustrated with plates from Eve Wood's thirty-year signature series of darkly humorous drawings and paintings, including several never exhibited.

Review Quotes

Praise for SIX

"This book of historical persona poems, spoken by the six wives of Henry VIII, could only have been written by a poet of prodigious imaginative powers, skill, and an enormous curiosity. That poet is Eve Wood and SIX is a wonderful book." --Thomas Lux

"Eve Wood's haunted and haunting ventriloquisms of sixteenth-century women remind me of John Berryman's hallucinatory Mistress Bradstreet. Like Berryman, Wood shows us what might be made of history if poets had their way. --Michael Collier

"Wood's use of returning and startling imagery pulls us into the haunting and heartless atmosphere into which each [of Henry XIII's wives] was thrown by marriage. [...] Equally remarkable ar the poet's divinings into these women's relationships with God and nature." --Kate Knapp Johnson

"Gorgeous and chilling." --Gail Willumsen

"These poems are a benediction -- nuanced, so perfectly crafted in their loveliness [...] smart, savvy, tender and in many places, elegant and wise. Buy this book, and live more richly!"--John Fairfield Rice

Praise for past works

"Remarks on Color is a luminous tapestry of prose poetry that invites readers to embark on a chromatic odyssey. Wood's stunning synthesis of familiar reality and surreal exaggeration illuminates the complex relationships, emotions and cultural associations we share with these spectral entities. As the amused reader considers the significance of each color in their own personal spectrum, Wood serves up a feast and critique of the colorful world in which we live. --Tyler Stallings

"Quickened by passion and imagination, the body of poems that makes up Love's Funeral is astoundingly alive."
--Mark Strand

Praise for Eve Wood

"As a lay reader, I found [Wood's] poetry rich, challenging and instinct with energy." --Tom Keneally

"The exactitude of Wood's language coupled with the strength of poetic vision, concretizes otherwise overwhelming themes into simple and beautifully executed poetic moments that are imbued with compassion and consideration of all that makes us divinely human." --North American Review

About the Author

Eve Wood is a Los Angeles-based artist and art critic. Her writing and poetry has been widely published in magazines and literary journals such as The New Republic, Best American Poetry, The Denver Quarterly, North American Review, The Atlantic Monthly, The Massachusetts Review, The Santa Monica Review, Poetry, The Seattle Review, and many others. Collected by and collaborating with notable people in Hollywood and the arts, Eve Wood is an artist's artist. She holds a BFA and MFA (1992, 1994) from California Institute of the Arts and an MFA from UC Irvine (1996) in creative writing. She is the recipient of a Jacob Javits Fellowship and a California Community Foundation Fellowship. Her drawings and paintings have been exhibited nationally and internationally in galleries such as Susanne Vielmetter, Western Project, Ochi Projects, and Track 16 Gallery, which currently represents her. She is the author and/or illustrator of seven collections of poetry and chapbooks.