Assisted Living

"Erin Murphy's invented form, the demi-sonnet, is small but alarmingly penetrative….These poems, simultaneously eerie and straightforward, exert a cumulative effect as they disclose the haunted domestic.”

     —Claire Bateman, author of SCAPE and LOCALS

“Murphy chisels words down to their musical rawness, providing us a poetry so well-wrought it is unforgettable, a charm against time's erasure.”

     —James Allen Hall, author of NOW YOU’RE THE ENEMY

ASSISTED LIVING by Erin Murphy is comprised of seventy-two demi-sonnets, a seven-line poetic form that she devised. The poems encompass the life span experience, ranging from childhood to aging and caregiving. A section is devoted to poems based on Murphy’s late mother-in-law, Ann Palmer De Prospo, an accomplished pianist who was the leader of the Major Bowes All-Girl Band in the 1930s. De Prospo died in 2013 at the age of 99.

Poems from this Brick Road Prize-winning collection have appeared in BARRELHOUSE, REVIEW AMERICANA, THE SUMMERSET REVIEW, CHEAT RIVER REVIEW, and elsewhere. A selection of the poems was published in the chapbook REMORSE CODE as part of the Seven Kitchens Press Keystone Chapbook Series.

Erin Murphy is the author of six previous collections of poetry, including ANCILLA (Lamar University Press) and editor of three anthologies, including MAKING POEMS: FORTY POEMS WITH COMMENTARY BY THE POETS (SUNY Press) and the forthcoming BODIES OF TRUTH: PERSONAL NARRATIVES ON ILLNESS, DISABILITY, AND MEDICINE (University of Nebraska Press). Her awards include the Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Prize, the Foley Poetry Award, the National Writers' Union Poetry Award judged by Donald Hall, and The Normal School Poetry Prize judged by Nick Flynn. She is professor of English and creative writing at Penn State University, Altoona College. Learn more at www.erin-murphy.com.