Belief Blues
by Kay Murphy
ISBN 0-916620-88-3
96 pages $15

Kay Murphy's first collection, The Autopsy, was published by Spoon River Poetry Press. Her poetry, fiction, and reviews have appeared in such journals as Poetry, Fiction International, Chelsea, and American Book Review. Murphy was reared in Illinois and earned her M.F.A. from Goddard College. She teaches at the University of New Orleans.

"What if we caught the poet 'Dancing with Elvis - While the Beatles Took Over America'? What if we see her roosting with Rimbaud, The Bathers of Cezanne dripping paint - or ink - in the hallucination of her canvas? What if our poet is a pagan picking her way through the 'pre-Roman' wilderness of Europe? In the 'dark lake' of these lines, art sleeps with both eyes open; memory wrestles with nostalgia; the personal flows gracefully into the public. Kay Murphy has fortified this collection with the authority of testimony and experience. There is a riveting timbre to her voice, a narrative vigour to her telling. Highly literate and affectingly playful, carefully philosophical and deliciously irreverent. Belief Blues speaks with a magnificence which defies hyperbole." Niyi Osundare, Recipient of Africa's Noma Award.