An Imaginary Affair

""In this intimate collection of poems, Diana Raabpays tribute to the sensual physicality of Pablo Neruda's work and to her own real and invented lives. With unvarnished honesty, An Imaginary Affair celebrates a woman's heart and mind through a handful of odes, epistolary poems, and the idea that memory and anticipation can sustain and nourish us; even drinking a glowing hot toddy is transformed into a meditation on how an ordinary act can awaken desire. Her unvarnished honesty gives equal attention to matters of mortality, where loss is lyrically considered ("...will you run from me / when trains sleep at their stations"), and also explored in the spirit of open curiosity ("How long does it take / for a pine casket to disintegrate / in this caving land...). These poems remind us that to be alive is to try and balance joy and lament, and how through this effort we more deeply inhabit the world and ourselves."-Emma Trelles, author of Tropicalia and Poet Laureate of Santa Barbara"