Soul Cake Paperback by Lisa Russ Spaar

Product Details

• Publisher: Persea Books (2026-05-05)
• Language: English
• Paperback: 60 pages
• ISBN-13: 9780892556427
• Item Weight: 113.4 grams
• Dimensions: 20.88 x 13.74 x 0.71 cm

In Soul Cake, Lisa Russ Spaar makes late-life, hibernal forays into ecstasy, God hunger, soul-making, language, beauty, and an unquenched desire for the b/Beloved.

Lisa Russ Spaar’s seventh full-length collection of poems, Soul Cake, which takes its title from an ancient mummer/wassailer’s carol, leans with late-life, hibernal ecstasy into Spaar’s flood subjects: God hunger, soul-making, language, beauty, and an unquenched desire for the b/Beloved.  Bodily and mysterious, the poems wrest from their rich, sumptuous, surprising lexicon flashes of dread, beyonding, and gnosis.  

About the Author

Lisa Russ Spaar is the author of a novel, Paradise Close; six acclaimed collections of poetry, most recently Madrigalia: New & Selected Poems; and The Hide-and-Seek Muse: Annotations of Contemporary Poetry, a collection of poetry history and criticism. She was a 2014 finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Citation for Excellence in Reviewing. Spaar has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Library of Virginia Award for Poetry, and a Rona Jaffe Award, among other honors and awards. She is a Professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of Virginia, where for many years she directed the MFA program.