This is a sweetheart of a book. This is prose poetry at its finest. In the tradition of Russell Edson, but uniquely its own, it is smart but never stuffy, whimsical but never without meaning, startlingly fresh without losing the reader, funny and melancholic all wrapped up together. The Last Blonde is an acute observer of her world, filled with inappropriate dogs, chickens and dirt. You will never think of car crash dummies the same way. Or eggs. You too, by the time Koncel is finished with you, will want to be a Viking. Sneakily feminist, and sometimes heart-squeezing—oh, read this one!
“The Last Blonde is another virtuoso collection from Mary A. Koncel. Like Closer to Day and You Can Tell the Horse Anything, this book gathers together a stunning combination of wit, invention, and pathos into a series of moments that you wont soon forget… Buy this book!—you wont regret it.”
—Robert Alexander, founding editor of the Marie Alexander Poetry Series
One cannot praise The Last Blonde enough. Here’s the prose poem at its luminous best: deft, magical, funny, and wistful. Hers is a generous, tender, radiant voice—in love with this world. A voice we trust. The poet writes, “I remember my hunger. It begins with a rustle in the grass, just after dusk, between fragrance and mildew.” This is a one-of-a kind collection—a book I’ll return to again and again.”
—Carol Potter, author of Some Slow Bees, 2014 Field Poetry Prize
Mary A. Koncel has published two books of prose poetry—Closer to Day (Quale Press) and You Can Tell the Horse Anything (Tupelo Press). She was a recipient of a poetry fellowship from the Massachusetts Cultural Council and a finalist for the Poetry Society of Americas Norma Farber First Book Award. Her poems have appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies, including The Massachusetts Review, Denver Review, Barrow Street, The Prose Poem: An International Journal, and No Boundaries: Prose Poems by 25 American Poets. She lives in Worthington, Massachusetts with her husband and many animals.
