Award-winning writer, teacher
and scholar

Threnody

Threnody

Cover Art by Nicci Mechler 

Threnody explores the figure of lady-death, an icon come to life in these poems about the death cart, the death kiss, and a narrative dance with death. This is a collection of linked micro fictions & vignettes. They read like prose poems, too, which is part of the beauty in them—these small works live in a liminal space, somehow between poetry and prose, but also an almost-dream state between life and death. Sometimes versus too.

Threnody (from the Greek word thrēnōidia implying lament) is set in New Mexico and narrates the journey of the protagonist “I” who meets lady death, befriends her, and rides in her death cart. Wiseman is a brilliant poet, and this can be seen in the manner in which she constructs the fourteen micro-pieces. All of them carry a generous use of vowels and soft consonants, eerily highlighting the lament that lasts throughout the narrative.
– Shinjini Bhattacharjee, Morphemic Morphology

Praise for Threnody