Grace Bauer has a rare power: whether it is the appearance of Mormon missionaries at her door or finding an answer to an eight year old boy's question, “What's Nebraska?” she transforms life into perfect poems. In this collection, her poems connect to the world through personal history (days spent in Nebraska, New Orleans, and Greece) and popular culture (Blanche Dubois, Norma Jean Baker and Dorothy, formerly of Oz, all make guest appearances) in ways that combine the comic and the elegiac. In the wonderful poem “Revising My Vita,” she examines her life through the lens of that ship's log of academic career, the CV, and finds “life is a course of study I will/ never really be sure I've passed.” All the strong poems in Retreats & Recognitions are grounded in the reality of detail, though Bauer is smart enough to realize how often the real mimics the surreal in a world where Krishnas cruise Bourbon Street. Retreats & Recognitions is a book where memory and imagination converge.
—Jesse Lee Kercheval
“The bad boys inside good girls” hurrah Bauer's new book where a crucifix bonks Mom on the head and “the road to ruin looks scenic.” You lucky reader, you.
—Terese Svoboda
Grace Bauer is the author of Beholding Eye (CustomWords, 2006) and The Women At The Well (Portals Press, 1997) as well as three chapbooks of poems: Where You’ve Seen Her (Pennywhistle Press), The House Where I’ve Never Lived (Anabiosis Press), and Field Guide To The Ineffable: Poems On Marcel Duchamp (Snail’s Pace Press). Her poems, stories, and essays have appeared in numerous anthologies and journals, including: Arts & Letters, Colorado Review, Doubletake, Margie, Poetry, Rattle, Southern Poetry Review, and others. She has received an Academy of American Poets Prize, Individual Artists Grants from the Virginia Commission for the Arts and the Nebraska Arts Council, and Fellowships from the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center. She is co-editor (with Julie Kane) of Umpteen Ways Of Looking At A Possum: Critical And Creative Responses To Everette Maddox (Xavier Review Press). She teaches at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.