Parts of the Mass

This first book of poems juxtaposes contemporary physics, personal and public history, and a passion for the sound of words with the structural arc of the Roman Catholic mass. The poems invest both in wordplay and in inquiry, wonder, disagreement, dissatisfaction and ethical urgency. This “mass” is attuned to turmoil andto the challenges of our day.

Catherine Imbriglio was born and lives in Rhode Island. She received an MA (poetry) and Ph.D. (American literature) from Brown University. Her poetry and criticism have appeared in magazines like American Letters & Commentary, Conjunctions, Denver Quarterly, Epoch, First Intensity, New American Writing, No: A Journal of the Arts, and in The Iowa Anthology of New American Poetries, ed. Reginald Shepherd. An essay on the poet Jack Spicer is forthcoming in After Spicer (Wesleyan UP). She has received an Untermeyer fellowship in poetry and a merit award in poetry from the RI State Council on the Arts. She teaches in the Expository Writing Program at Brown.

Parts of the Mass is her first book.

“Formally exploratory as her poems are, poetry is for her not a formal exercise but a necessity, a way to understand the world and the words with which we know it” – Reginal Shepherd

“This is a smart and wily book of poems, brilliant, clever, and courageous.” – Bin Ramke

“Many of the poems want to be read aloud. They convey a faultless and timeless rhythm even as the words themselves bear images of our own lives.” – Marjorie Milligan