Description
Winner of the 2015 May Sarton New Hampshire Poetry Prize
The speakers in Devil’s Paintbrush are simultaneously prophetic and playful, as in the poem “Echolocation.” In it, Alvarez writes, “I stole the owl’s nest that she stole from the hawk. / Since then I’ve always walked as though hands ran / up my legs and this is flight.”
Alvarez, in addition to being a poet, is an artist. She even created the cover image for the book using a flamethrower! She teaches visual art at the Juilliard School and New York City College of Technology, CUNY, and often refers to painting in her writing. Devil’s Paintbrush is divided into five sections, all with art-related titles: “Trompe L’oeil,” “Portraiture,” “Night Landscape,” “Figure-Ground Illusion, and “Illuminated.”
Desirée Alvarez is a visual poet who weaves history and the actual with the miraculous and mythic to form magical-realist compositions addressing human interaction with the natural world. Winner of numerous awards, fellowships, and residencies (from American Academy of Arts and Letters, Poets House, and Yaddo, among others), her poems have appeared in Poetry Magazine, Boston Review, Denver Quarterly, and Prairie Schooner. She received the Glenna Luschei Award from Prairie Schooner, and the Robert D. Richardson Non-Fiction Award from Denver Quarterly. She teaches at New York City College of Technology, CUNY, and the Juilliard School. She received her MFA from School of Visual Arts and a BA from Wesleyan University.
Visit Desirée Alvarez’s website to learn more about her art and writing!
