The Enchanted Room

Maurya Simon

This remarkable debut is a cohesive yet wide-ranging suite that displays a finely tuned sense of craft and a mind alert not only to the present but to the possible, to many traditions, and a deeply felt sense of history. Yet, for all Simon’s diverse themes and structures, the poet remains rooted in this world—accessible, clear, and vibrant.

ISBN: 9780914742982

Format: Paperback

About the Author

Maurya Simon was born in New York City and grew up in Europe and Southern California. She was educated at the University of California, Berkeley, Pitzer College, and the University of California, Irvine. In the 1970s and 1990s, Simon lived in South India, where she studied Tamil and pranayama yoga. She’s won numerous awards, including the 2019 IPBA Franklin Awards Gold Medal for her tenth volume of poems, The Wilderness: New and Selected Poems, 1980–2016 (2018).  Additional honors include a …

Read more

Reviews

“The images are graceful, the cadences lovely; Ms. Simon has a sure sense of the musicality of line.” —New York Times Book Review

“Simon’s gospel, simply put, is that everything—animate or inanimate—is potentially treasure. This is an impressive first collection. Simon tries to see through things, as if they were composed of light rather than matter. And her vision leads the reader into a world rendered luminous, its radiance sharply, almost painfully defined.” —Poetry

“Simon’s poems are sometimes public, addressing Rimbaud, the Sibyl, and even the Messiah. More often she stays in the realm of the personal, documenting the ‘open wound’ with stunning imagery as she offers up lamentations for missing wives or parents of Indian deities.” —Library Journal

“Maurya Simon is like the sibyl, she is present and not present, domestic and exotic, contemporary reporter and timeless lyric trance-walker. But most important of all, she is a prophet of the heart—these poems tell us where love is taking us.” —Carol Muske