The Wanton Sublime: A Florilegium of Whethers and Wonders

In her dazzling third volume of poetry, The Wanton Sublime , Anna Rabinowitz creates nothing short of a new genre of utterance as she cuts through pieties and myths to get at the essential humanity of the Virgin Mary, and, ultimately, of all women.
The Wanton Sublime is an “”anthology”” of texts and commentaries that propels us on a breathtaking journey mapped by questions, conversations, and speculationsa journey to the very foundations of womanhood and motherhood. Again and again Mary, exemplar of the feminine, quintessential mother, bearer/birther of divinity is re-visioned and re-defined; she is made kindred to Io, to Europa and to an ancient Egyptian woman who may have been the first unflinchingly assertive feminist. Rabinowitz investigates Mary as concept and as fact, as symbol and as flesh-and-blood female. What does it mean to be chosen? How does one engage with otherness? What forces operate when one’s life is interrupted? Are there possibilities of alternative narratives? How does one process the condition of not knowing? Linguistically brilliant and stylistically inventive, this daring work makes the universal particular, the particular universal. The Wanton Sublime explores the burden, the dilemma and the glory of being chosen as it leads us to a renewed appreciation of what it means to be alive and a woman.