Love, an Index [Paperback]

At long last back in print and in paperback!

A man disappears. The woman who loves him is left scarred and haunted. In her fierce, one-of-a-kind debut, Rebecca Lindenberg tells the story?in verse?of her passionate relationship with Craig Arnold, a much-respected poet who disappeared in 2009 while hiking a volcano in Japan. Lindenbergs billowing, I-contain-multitudes style lays bare the poets sadnesses, joys, and longings in poems that are lyric and narrative, at once plainspoken and musically elaborate.

Regarding her role in Arnolds story, Lindenberg writes with clear-eyed humility and endearing dignity: ?The girl with the ink-stained teeth / knows shes famous / in a tiny, tragic way. / Shes not / daft, after all. And then later, playfully, of her travels in Italy with the poet, her lover: ?The carabinieri / wanted to know if there were bears / in our part of America. Yes, we said, / many bears. Man-eating bears? Yes, of course, / many man-eating bears. Every poem in this collection bursts with humor, pathos, verve?and an utterly unique, soulful voice.

This widely anticipated debut, already selected as a finalist for several prominent book awards, marks the first collection in the newly minted McSweeneys Poetry Series. MPS is an imprint which seeks to publish a broad range of excellent new poetry collections in exquisitely designed hardcovers?poetry thats useful and meaningful to anyone in any walk of life.

?Love, an Indexis an utterly startling, muscular, heartbreaking book?poems pulled into existence by an event anyone who reads them wants only to reverse. Yet facing the irreversible fully, and still finding words, is what poems do. They demonstrate what it is to go on. I wish this book were not here to be read. But it is. And be read it will, with gratitude, stopped breath, amazement.
?Jane Hirshfield

?Is it Northrop Frye that defines the lyric poet as someone whispering to herself or to a llsg