The Perseids is a book which insists that visual contemplation of the world is an act of the soul. These poems render the rich biological detail of landscape with passion and exactitude and describe the mind's dazzling revelations during moments of shifting perspective and scale.

That we recall more vividly the veins
Of a maple leaf pressing its damp green
Palm against the pane than the dear hand

Passed--intolerable fact!--away
Humiliates our love, enacts a counter-
Consolation. Or so it seems: for the bounty
Of the works is also dear to us, a liquid
Gleam so gem-like, so dew bright in ita quiddity;
It puts a lip to us . . .

--From "The Mirror of the Mind"

"It is a rare pleasure to encounter these days a young poet so thoroughly at home in the natural world, so deeply attuned to its mysteries, that reading her book we enter, in turn, that "Spherical Mirror," the elemental mind which, as The Perseids reminds us, forms "the core of human bliss."-- Sherod Santos, judge, Vassar Miller Prize in Poetry 2000

The Vassar Miller Prize in Poetry is awarded annually to a previously unpublished collection of poetry. The winner receives $1,000 and publication by The University of North Texas Press. Selection is made by a distinguished poet.

Karen Holmberg was born and raised in southeastern Connecticut, on the Long Island Sound. A winner of the 1996 Discovery/Nation Award, and twice winner of an Academy of American Poets Prize, her work has been published in The Paris Review , Slate , and The Nation , among other journals. She holds an M.F.A. in Poetry from the University of California-Irvine. She currently lives in Columbia, Missouri.