Betsy Mars

COMING SOON!

Rue Obscure
by Betsy Mars

ISBN: 9781962405973
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Betsy Mars is a poet, compulsive photographer, and an editor at Gyroscope Review. Betsy’s poems are widely available online and in print in over 80 publications such as ONE ART, SWWIM, The California Quarterly, Thimble, and the anthology Signed, Sealed, Delivered: The Motown Poetry Review (Madville Press). Betsy is the author of two chapbooks, Alinea, and In the Muddle of the Night, the latter co-written with Alan Walowitz. Her poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net and were chosen as the winner of the Alexandria Quarterly’s First Line Poetry Contest Series and of The Poetry Salon’s Practiced Poets Prize. Betsy’s photos have been featured in Spank the Carp, Soul Poetry, and used in Rattle as an ekphrastic prompt. She is a lifelong poet, writing her first poem (at age 5 or so) in Portuguese––an elegy for her cat––while her family lived in Brazil. Betsy currently works intermittently as a substitute teacher, but her “mission” is poetry. And, apparently, supporting the local veterinary professionals.

ABOUT THE BOOK:

Rue Obscure excavates the poet’s foundational relationships, poem by poem mining life in an attempt to comprehend corporality. It asks what connects us, here and eternally, while looking at love’s various manifestations and imperfections. With humor and compassion, Mars observes the manifold ways that humans strive, cope, and seek consolation in a sometimes-frightening, unpredictable world.  Her first full-length collection, Rue Obscure explores how to find purpose and even joy when encumbered by regret, accumulating losses, and existential mysteries. 

ADVANCE PRAISE:

In her poem, “At The Ob/Gyn,” Betsy Mars writes, we . . . create a buzz and then we’re gone. The poet could easily have added that some leave a record of their time on Earth in clear, beautifully crafted poetry. Rue Obscure, Mars’ new book, braids life and death together, so instead of sleeping in sorrow, this poet transforms experience close to the breakable heart. And when the heart opens, light pours out.

––Grace Cavalieri, Maryland’s tenth Poet Laureate

We all live under the specter of physical death, no matter our philosophy. Poet Betsy Mars is exceptionally gifted in grappling with the big issues of suffering and loss and the artist’s place in the universe. The last stanza of the poem “Androcles” defines the dilemma: perpetual unknowing. From where I stand what does it mean / to have pulled a thorn from a lion’s paw / or spread my words like seeds, not knowing / where or how they land? Mars spins the straw of loss into the gold of art with empathy, intelligence, and music. Rue Obscure is a beautiful book, one I will return to often for comfort and pleasure.

––Donna Hilbert, author of Enormous Blue Umbrella