The Buddha Wonders if She is Having a Mid-Life Crisis

Phoenicia Publishing is delighted to announce the March 2018 publication of the latest book by celebrated poet Luisa A. Igloria, her second title with our press. These unique, surprising, humorous and poignant “Buddha poems,” written in early 2016, appeared online at Via Negativa, and they are collected here in print for the first time.

To quote from the book’s foreword:

“Reading Luisa A. Igloria’s poems is like opening doors within doors within doors. These doors give access to the mind, the imagination, into lush and lyric worlds. The Buddha Wonders if She is Having a Mid-Life Crisis continues pushing this space the poet occupies—a space between the real and the dream…Poem after poem reveals the Buddha. S/he is sneaky and coy. S/he peeks behind every stanza, meditating at every end-stopped line, her robes overflowing in every layer of images. And in the end, after we’ve taken in every poem, s/he finds a place in the center of us.”

— Ira Sukrungruang, author of four books including Southside Buddhist, Talk Thai: The Adventures of Buddhist Boy, and the forthcoming Buddha’s Dog and other Meditations; professor at the University of South Florida and AWP Southern Regional Chair.