From intimate meditations on birthing, motherhood, and parenting in a time of war to its explorations of the frank and grave matters surrounding a life lived while a lover is off fighting a war, these poems always put themselves in harm's way.

Poetry. Women's Studies. Elyse Fenton's follow-up to her critically acclaimed first book furthers the great themes of women in wartime. From intimate meditations on birthing, motherhood, and parenting in a time of war, to its explorations of the frank and grave matters surrounding a life lived while a lover is off fighting a war, these lush poems of the human interior always put themselves in harm's way, for there the poet finds the truest meanings. SWEET INSURGENT, winner of the Alice Fay di Castagnola Prize, is a book of vivid and crushing lyric poems, each one landing like a mortar to the earth.