Should Have Known by Linda Arntzenius

Most of us Should Have Known a lot more than we do, and many writers moan their slips and falls, but Linda Arntzenius portrays her mistakes and misalliances with wit, verve and sassiness. When her Narcissus declares his leap into an ice-cold stream more satisfactory than his making love to her on a chilly mountainside or when her Pygmalion finishes his hammering and stares at her with “cow-eyed adoration,” we laugh. If Arntzenius’s he is “sinister,” her she is always “dexter” in this playful “Pythagorean dance of opposites.” These skillful poems portray Arntzenius’s lifelong ballet; they delight and satisfy even when “sorrows linger/like the scent/of orange blossom.”

–Lois Marie Harrod is widely published in literary journals and online ezines from American Poetry Review to Zone 3. Her latest work is The Bed the Size of a Small Country, 2025.

This fine selection of poems is remarkably wide-ranging both in subject matter and geography. From the Scottish Highlands to Princeton, from classical myth to childhood, from relationships to self-portraits, be prepared to be taken on a journey into the lyrical, the witty, the unblinking and the downright sensuous.

–Award-winning Scottish poet John Glenday is the author of four collections. His work has appeared in Times Literary Supplement, London Review of Books, Poetry (Chicago), The Scotsman, The Guardian, Ploughshares, to name but a few.

In these precisely crafted poems Linda Arntzenius masterfully demonstrates how the ability to adopt a well-practiced wry perspective can help us to resiliently survive any number of the rueful experiences that seem unavoidable to all still innocent enough to long for love.

–Jim Haba is a visual artist, poet, professor and founding director of the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival. He has earned national recognition for his literary work.