“Landau's killer wit evokes Dorothy Parker crossed with Sylvia Plath—leaping spark after spark, growing to deadly dark fire. is her best book, its acerbic tone interspersed with lines of grave and startling beauty.” — "Like Richard Linklater's but for girls (and women): Deborah Landau's vividly relatable third collection, , reminds us that coming of age lasts well beyond adolescence.” — * “As freshly immediate as ever, award-winning poet Landau reveals that ‘the uses of the body are manifold,’ moving in four sections with a roughly chronological feel from wedding parties to flabby bodies around the pool to the realization ‘But we already did everything’—all with an underlying sense of urgency: ‘Life please explain.’ As Landau explores her physical self and her sexuality, she’s tart, witty, fluid, direct, and brutally honest, and her work can be appreciated by any reader.”— starred review "Deborah Landau . . . is both confessional and direct, like Sylvia Plath and Allen Ginsberg. Her taut, elegant, highly controlled constructions meditate upon yearning and selfhood."— Deborah Landau's presents the very specific challenges of womanhood. Her poems address what it means to be alive— —in a female body. She fills her poetry with compelling nouns: wine glasses, bridal gowns, and "books and teacups and ghosts." And ghosts: underneath evocative images and poetic play, there's a moving, yearning mysticism. is the author of two books of poetry. She was educated at Stanford, Columbia, and Brown, where she earned her PhD. Currently she is the director of the NYU Creative Writing Program and lives in New York City.