Kathleen Rooney’s first book about the effects of Oprah’s Book Club on American reading habits was followed by Live Nude Girl, her meditation on life as a professional artist’s model and examination of personal memoir.
In her soon to be released collection of short autobiographical pieces, For You, For You I am Trilling These Songs (Counterpoint Press), Rooney epitomizes life as a young adult in the modern world. The title comes from a line in Walt Whitman’s poem “For You, O Democracy.” At one point she tours the apartments of her idol, poet Weldon Kees, who disappeared rather than dying, a metaphor for her feeling of displacement in an America that increasingly seems more a betrayal than a fulfillment of Whitman’s hopeful prophecy.
Rooney writes poetry herself. Oneiromance (an epithalamion) was recently reviewed in The Chiron Review. Along with Elisa Gabbert, she is the author of the collaborative poetry chapbook Something Really Wonderful and the collection That Tiny Insane Voluptuousness.
Comments