Tolstoy Killed Anna Karenina
With the same tender honesty found in all of Dara Barrois/Dixon's poetry (née Dara Wier), the poems in Tolstoy Killed Anna Karenina are curious about the world we inhabit and the worlds we create. Wier brings generous attention to the things we love—be they animals, books, skyscapes, movies, poems, or other human beings—and the ways in which our stories around them help shape our sense of being. Here, with emotional exactitude, is a collection of poems that is unafraid to express "love humor despair loving kindness love humor empathy/humor joy sympathy love kindness courage."
Dara Barrois/Dixon (formerly Dara Wier) is the author of numerous collections of poetry, including In the Still of the Night (Wave Books, 2017), You Good Thing (Wave Books, 2013), Selected Poems (Wave Books, 2009), Remnants of Hannah (Wave Books, 2006), Reverse Rapture (Verse Press, 2005, 2006 SFSU Poetry Center Book Award), Hat On a Pond (Verse Press, 2002), and Voyages in English (Carnegie Mellon, 2001). Her poetry has been supported by fellowships and awards from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Massachusetts Cultural Council, and the American Poetry Review. In 2005 she held the Rubin Distinguished Chair at Hollins University in Roanoke, Virginia.
She teaches workshops and form and theory seminars at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and co-directs the University of Massachusetts’ Juniper Initiative for Literary Arts and Action. Each June she teaches a poetry workshop for the Juniper Summer Institute. Her editing work includes publishing limited edition chapbooks and broadsides with Factory Hollow Press, North Amherst, Massachusetts, a small independent press she co-edits with Emily Pettit and Guy Pettit. Along with James Haug and James Tate she has edited the University of Massachusetts Press Juniper Series for poetry.