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Today's poem is "Eat"
from Seedlip and Sweet Apple

Milkweed Editions

Arra Lynn Ross grew up on a communal farm in Minnesota and attended Macalester College in Saint Paul, where she earned her BA in English. She is currently completing a PhD in English at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln. Her work has appeared in Spoon River Poetry Review, Hayden’s Ferry, Beloit Poetry Journal, and Alimentum. Seedlip and Sweet Apple is her first book.

Books by Arra Lynn Ross:

Other poems on the web by Arra Lynn Ross:

About Seedlip and Sweet Apple:

"Situated between glossary and glossolalia, word and vision, the communal act of language and the singularity of inspiration, Seedlip and Sweet Apple reaffirms the tradition of American visionaries, even while reshaping that tradition into an innovative and dynamic lyric. Arra Lynn Ross raises the roof with her convocation of tongues. A pioneering collection of poems."
—D. A. Powell

"Seedlip and Sweet Apple marks the birth of a star. Radical and transgressive young poet and writer Arra Ross has made a miraculous text of narrative and speech fragments—from Sappho to Jesus, from Milton to Blake, from ‘broken bits of Mohawk’ and newspaper accounts—to raise up Mother Ann Lee, founder of the Shakers, her ecstatic voice, energy, and vision. If, as Yeats promised, ‘soul clap its hands and sing,’ here she is, on the page, in the ear: Ann Lee in the historical world, harmed and holy, brave, alive and in community, ‘a woman sowing seeds at the break of day.’"
—Hilda Raz

"Arra Ross invites us into a story that is at once harrowing and spiritually alive. At a moment when religious fervor is so much a force in our own time’s public conversations, the story of Mother Ann Lee allows us to see how such fervor has marked our past, and how its complexities might inform and deepen our views of contemporary spiritual life."
—Leslie Adrienne Miller

"As remarkable as it is beautiful, Seedlip and Sweet Apple is a book of heft and sway. From the unwavering lips of Mother Ann Lee, the story of one woman’s religious journey comes speaking to us across the multiple distances of geography, history, and gender—distances that are brought together by Arra Lynn Ross’ poetic invention and narrative deftness. In writing through Mother Ann Lee, Ross makes plain the sacrifices and determination that are a part of any creative act, whether the conception of a new religion or of poetry itself. This book not only revives an important religious figure, it reminds us just how close language is to prayer when spoken by a pioneer."
—Joshua Kryah



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