The Furies - by Moira Egan (Paperback)

About the Book

"In The Furies, Moira Egan offers fierce feminist reimaginings of familiar myths and narratives, from Arachne to Echo, from Medusa and Mary Magdalene to the female characters of The Odyssey, in verse that highlights the value of solidarity and collective strength among women. With dazzling erudition and playful ingenuity, she deploys exuberant wordplay and traditional poetic forms to subvert the patriarchal canon. At the heart of the book is a profound exploration of voice, not least the ongoing silencing of women's voices: Egan blends righteous anger with grief, ultimately finding hope in the transformative power of language"-- Provided by publisher.

Book Synopsis

In The Furies, Moira Egan offers fierce feminist reimaginings of familiar myths and narratives, from Arachne to Echo, from Medusa and Mary Magdalene to the female characters of The Odyssey, in verse that highlights the value of solidarity and collective strength among women. With dazzling erudition and playful ingenuity, she deploys exuberant wordplay and traditional poetic forms to subvert the patriarchal canon. At the heart of the book is a profound exploration of voice, not least the ongoing silencing of women's voices: Egan blends righteous anger with grief, ultimately finding hope in the transformative power of language.

Review Quotes

"One of the best living formalist poets writing in English, Moira Egan composes poems that are elegant, intelligent, pitch-perfect and not infrequently more than a little angry."--California Review of Books

"The Furies reminds us once again why Moira Egan is one of the most influential poets of our time. With an inimitable voice, she tackles intense subjects like desire and womanhood with sharp wit and unflinching truth, all while maintaining her technical mastery. A luminary in the world of poetic form, Egan constructs a captivating world that ranges from a group therapy session with the female characters in the Odyssey to COVID-19--one we are privileged to enter and reluctant to leave. Through each poem, the speakers in The Furies reveal that true strength lies in vulnerability. It is impossible not to root for them."--Alexis Sears, author of Out of Order, winner of the 2021 Donald Justice Poetry Prize

"Formally inventive, darkly funny, and subversively neoclassical, Moira Egan's The Furies is brilliantly contrary. I never do exactly as I should, the speaker confesses in 'Flawed.' All of the poems comprising the collection fearlessly (mis)behave in this way. While Furies alludes to the goddesses of vengeance, it also suggests a sweeping destruction. That said, poets must break a few eggs, so to speak, to make something moving. With Furies, Egan has done just that."--Nicole Sealey, author of The Ferguson Report: An Erasure and Ordinary Beast

"The high wit of Moira Egan's poems, at their prepossessing best, makes them stand out from the crowd. Theatrical in conception and execution, her speakers turn caustic or droll, passionate or knowing. Her poems are smart, yes, but it is an intelligence filled with pathos. Egan feels her thoughts, as Eliot says of the Metaphysicals, 'as immediately as the odour of a rose.' She writes to delight the senses."--David Yezzi, author of More Things in Heaven: New and Selected Poems

"What can be done with fury? Moira Egan reveals how playfulness and even healing can emerge in its wake. Women from The Odyssey wittily set the record straight in the collection's first sonnet sequence. Egan understands received forms' emotional and psychological layers: sonnet sequences as community gathering or anagrams as sensuous, private conversation. The Furies is intelligent, biting, and earthy."--Derrick Austin, author of Black Sand, Tenderness, and Trouble the Water

About the Author

Moira Egan has published five books of poetry in the United States and four in Italy, including Amore e morte, a bilingual collection of new and selected poems. Her work has been featured in journals and anthologies on four continents. Also a prize-winning translator, she lives in Rome with her husband, Damiano Abeni.