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The Rose

By Ariana Reines
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Brief Description
The award-winning poet reckons with feminine archetypes, erotic love, and the shifting boundary between power and surrender. Fury is very lustful A body concealing its heart's desire Has a certain texture A tang or an edge if you will That the openhearted cannot match & when... Read More
Format: Paperback / softback
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Book Hero Magic formatted this description to make it easier to read. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Description

The award-winning poet reckons with feminine archetypes, erotic love, and the shifting boundary between power and surrender.

Fury is very lustful A body concealing its heart's desire

Has a certain texture A tang or an edge if you will

That the openhearted cannot match & when exactly does the deceitful

Heart open? At climax. -from 'The Hanged Man'

The force that drives The Rose is volcanic desire - and its self-imposed restriction. Digging deep into the ironies and raptures of true 'Romance', award-winning poet Ariana Reines measures the real thing against the love (or should we say sex) that poetry has always depended on. She plunges into feminine archetypes to explore masculine pain - 'I have always liked helpless / & terrible men because they break my mind.' In these poems, inherited ideologies of gender performance are replaced with bold vulnerability - paradoxes of power and surrender transmute the speaker's understanding of suffering, desire, and the soul.

The voice in The Rose is wry and bare, approaching the connection between erotic love and spirituality with humour. Investigating war, maternity, violent sensuality, and the role of language in magical acts, Reines is unafraid to uncover the 'secret / & terrible shovelings / Of love,' and the result is a bloody and pulsing, sexy and unabashed bloom.

Book Details

INFORMATION

ISBN: 9781837311736

Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd

Format: Paperback / softback

Date Published: 02 April 2026

Country: United Kingdom

Imprint: Penguin

Audience: General / adult

DIMENSIONS

Spine width: 14.0mm

Width: 129.0mm

Height: 197.0mm

Weight: 124g

Pages: 144

Collections

Ariana Reines Arts & Culture Best Sellers at Book Hero General Fiction In Stock Arts & Culture Books In Stock Books LGBTQ+ New Release Fiction Non-Fiction Penguin Books Poetry

About the Author

Ariana Reines is an award-winning poet, playwright, and performing artist from Salem, Massachusetts. Her books include 2020 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award winner, A Sand Book, and Alberta Prizewinning The Cow. Her play, Telephone, won two Obies and has been performed internationally. In 2020, she founded Invisible College, a study hall for poetry, ancient texts, and the arts. She lives in New York City.

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