J. Allyn Rosser is the author of three previous poetry collections: Foiled Again, Misery Prefigured, and Bright Moves. She is the recipient of numerous awards, most recently the New Criterion Poetry Prize and fellowships from the Guggenheim and Lannan Foundations. Rosser is associate professor of English at Ohio University and is editor in chief of New Ohio Review.

Books by J. Allyn Rosser:

Other poems on the web by J. Allyn Rosser:
Thirty-eight poems
"Ode"
"Sugar Dada"
Two poems
Three poems
"Kindergarten field trip"
"Throne Switch Thrown"
"Discounting Lynn"

About Mimi’s Trapeze:

"It’s a rare pleasure to follow the quick and pointed intelligence that animates Rosser’s poems. Some are sonnets, some are long and lean, but all have clear, idiosyncratic voices. They come bearing philosophy, nostalgia, rabies, chicken soup, and the head of Holofernes. They’re funny, tart, perceptive—good company. And more than one goes armed with a blackjack ending."
—Sarah Lindsay

"J. Allyn Rosser’s poems are adept at using a probing wit to subvert conventions, the conventions of thought that keep us from exploring complex truth. In the evocative title poem, we can see this process worked out in an extended dramatic monologue of a woman attempting to get to the bottom of her conflicted relation to family history. Rather than narrowing to a point, the poems open out as they proceed, and as a result these lively celebrations of the ordinary crazy heart are full of discoveries."
—Carl Dennis

"In Rosser’s poems, wit dances with grimness, and sorrow steps out stylishly dressed to kill. But their flash doesn’t obscure the darkling power of these poems; this is a gallant, inventive, large-hearted book."
—Rosanna Warren