Mary Ann Samyn is the author of four books of poetry, most recently Purr (New Issues, 2005). Her work has won the Emily Dickinson Prize from the Poetry Society of America, the James Wright Poetry Award from Mid-American Review, and a Pushcart Prize. She teaches in the MFA program at West Virginia University.

Other poems by Mary Ann Samyn in Verse Daily:
April 2, 2009:   "Iridescent, One Might Say" "I was beautiful at a distance..."
June 3, 2008:   "Is that robin's-egg blue?, or A Poet Answers Her Critics" "—Some want a guiding principle, narrative pick-me-up...."
November 21, 2006:   "Wish and What Happens" " Back to the fe fi ho hum of it...."
November 16, 2006:   "An Introduction to Devotion" " Do you consider yourself adept? The face of..."
April 6, 2006:   "Clarity, 1.2" " Considering The Despair of St. Thomas...."
October 15, 2004:  "A Thought, for Example, Is a Form" "Of light. And at the center, light. And at the edges..."

Books by Mary Ann Samyn:

Other poems on the web by Mary Ann Samyn:
Two poems
Two poems

About Beauty Breaks In:

"Mary Ann Samyn is a devotional poet, one devoted to the mischief and sanctity of a threshold life. Reading, delightedly, through Beauty Breaks In, I sometimes felt that I was bird watching with Paul Celan or going to the movies with Edmond Jabes. Better still, I felt a continuing spiritual economy of pure refreshment. 'A little mayhem goes a long way' as Samyn avows, and I rejoice to believe her."
—Donald Revell

"Mary Ann Samyn writes poems in which the impossible happens through language, the human experience is turned to sky, fire, fireworks, diamonds. This is a poet who is able to hijack sorrow, or error, or delight, and transform them into deeply imagined, perfectly condensed and terrifyingly expanded glimpses."
—Laura Kasischke