Masks

Masks is the affecting, sometimes terrifying debut collection of poems by award-winning fiction writer Ruthann Robson. Here we find poems that are frankly sexual and often passionate, but bathed in a clear hard light, even when she is dealing with the violent and the ultimately irrational. Some of these poems zero in on moments or trends in the poet's own life, as a lesbian mother, a child of the city streets and a legal scholar, while others examine the female experience through women as diverse as Frieda Kahlo, Alice B. Toklas, Diane Arbus, Kathe Kollwitz, Mary Cassatt, Willa Cather and Isadora Duncan.