Cynie Cory with Here on Rue Morgue Avenue

“These short stabs to the heart, tell one woman’s journey to the other side, the next stop, the last stop. Yes, the voyage is Byronic, and its psychopomp is Dylan, but the true haunting voice is Emily Dickinson in all her mad visionary language and anguish. Yet Cory is a 21st century woman, who roams the globe, reads everything, writes the blues. Shakespeare’s whispering in her ear, as she describes her grief, her loss. She says, “I can’t describe it. The pressure of want / ing to be.” And when she says, “I’m Ann Boleyn,” you believe her. This is poetry that takes the top off your head.”

–Barbara Hamby

Cynie Cory is the author of American Girl (New Issues). She is a graduate of the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop and Florida State University where she received a doctorate in English. Cory has taught creative writing and literature in the U.S. and in London and Spain. Her work has been anthologized most recently in And Here: 100 years of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula Writing, ed. Ron Riekki. Her poems have also appeared in many journals and magazines, including The American Poetry Review, Colorado Review, New American Writing, Ploughshares and Triquarterly. Cory is a native of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and makes her home in Tallahassee, Florida.