Archaic Smile

A new edition of A. E. Stallings's first book of poems, which was awarded the Richard Wilbur Award. In Archaic Smile , by the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Critics Circle Award finalist A. E. Stallings, the poet couples poetic meditations on classic stories and themes with poems about the everyday, sometimes mundane occurrences of contemporary life (like losing an umbrella or fishing with one’s father), and she infuses the latter with the magic of myth and history. With the skill of a scholar