This Country or That

Book Description
In Victoria Anderson's fine first book, This Country or That, we find a new but canny voice. A voice that is American, inviting, yet implacable in its observations, and as full of contradictions as the black swan of the title poem whose "extravagant neck snakes into the murk again and again." Anderson asks us to see and experience the world as it is, not as we might wish it. She renders a sublime that is frail but redolent with whiskey and cigarettes, a paradise that can be found in the smoky bars of the Southwest, the narrow streets of Spain and Mexico, in earthly bodily desire. Here are poems of humor and sensuality, wisdom and pathos, poems that accrue in rich detail and take on the difficulties of love, marriage, childhood, motherhood, "the toils and rewards," with an aplomb and grace that makes us feel lucky to have found these poems, this book, this strong and resonant voice.

About the Author
Victoria Anderson is an Assistant Professor of Writing at Loyola University, Chicago. She holds a B.A. and M.A. from the University of Texas and a Ph.D. from the Statue University of New York at Binghamton. Her work has appeared in numerous literary journals, and she has received two Illinois Arts Council grants for poetry. She lives in Evanston, Illinois.

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