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ASU Book Group to discuss professor's poetry


cover art for the book "Wreck Me," by Sally Ball
January 06, 2015

The ASU Book Group will meet at noon, Jan. 28, to discuss "Wreck Me," a book of poetry by Arizona State University Department of English faculty member Sally Ball.

The meeting will take place in room 316 of the Durham Language and Literature Building on the Tempe campus. The group is open to all ASU faculty, staff, students and alumni. Ball will be present to talk about her work.

"Wreck Me" is described as "a primer of emotional violence – a primer because, as these unassumingly gorgeous poems know so well, we can only be beginners when we confront our wish to be seized, transported, remade.

"The violence within us is everywhere in dialogue with the violence without, but nothing is romanticized here, not the wish to be wrecked, not the wish to wreck; the body is a metaphor for nothing. The language of these poems is nonetheless like the body – familiar, mysterious, vulnerable, strange."

"We love / that ravishment," says Ball of what we simultaneously fear and crave.

The ASU Book Group meets the last Wednesday of the month, and is sponsored by the Department of English. The group focuses on ASU staff and faculty books and books by local authors.

February's book is β€œThe Five Deaths of Roxanne Love,” by Erin Quinn of Gilbert. Her paranormal romance novel will be discussed in room 316 of the Durham, Language and Literature Building Feb. 25.

For more information, contact Judith Smith at jps@asu.edu.