PEN Oakland National Literary Award, 2008

Colleen J. McElroy's poetry shoots for the moon, and takes it in, too, in one way after another. The collection's award-winning poems animate women's experiences of sex, shopping, and dancing, while offering telling insight into the struggles and silver lining of lust, love, illness, and aging. Rich with vivid imagery and candid storytelling, Sleeping with the Moon takes readers on moonlit adventures under the night sky, through the barroom's smoky haze, and under the covers.

...Beware: such delicate

sights have driven more than one woman to despair

instead she watched him breathe— relishing

for a moment that secret space where night

grows soft and the moon's detumescence forgives—

and where if this jeweled light holds they might

strip themselves of years if only for one night

—from "In Praise of Older Women"

| Cover Title Copyright Contents PART I Pillow Book Mother Love Catching Gar I Speak to the Girl Some Dim Boy Loves Anniversary Most Wanted Sleeping with the Moon Codex: Frostbite Codex: Diagnosis Drawing a Line in the Sand Chilblains Blues for Spring In Praise of Older Women PART II You and Me and Veronica Lake First Date after Fifty The Company She Keeps Love Letters Boys Will Be Lust Blinded by the Moon Remarks Beneath the Visiting Moon Tango Moon Heartbreak Moon on the Strait of Juan de Fuca In the Blind Eye of Love's Shiny Moon The Year I Found Myself Under Two Blue Moons The Vixen Speaks to the Last Full Moon of the Century PART III Some Are Dead and Some Are Living Duty Electra Bad Slam Broadway Teaching G.I.s to Dance What I Wish for when I Bother to Wish at All Photolinen: La Push Beach Heartache: Things to Watch for Blues for the Slimes House Light Reflecting Glass in the Evelyn Room Telling Lies Reckless Divas Travelling Moon Ballad for the Blue Moon Tavern PART IV Mae West Chats It Up with Bessie Smith What Happened to the Rabbit The Moon in the Dragon's Mouth Wonder Woman Fairy Tales The Princess Unlearning the Brothers Grimm Eartha Takes the Old Woman Shopping for Red Shoes Song of the Red Kimono Last Dance for the Copper Room Hot Springs Band Vienna Layover Moon Over Turtle Island Moon Over Marakesh Loving this Earth Notes Back cover |

"She will happily give the MFAs a headache with her unfashionably clear statements and heartbroken admissions and the bold planting, in almost every poem, of the moon, which she annexes to her purposes, only sometimes romantic."—PoetryFoundation.org

|

Colleen J. McElroy is a professor emerita of English and creative writing at the University of Washington, Seattle, and the author of several poetry collections, including Traveling Music.