In the Badlands of Desire (Cleveland State University Poetry Series) - Softcover

Beckian Fritz Goldberg was born in Hartford, Wisconsin, in 1954 and raised in Arizona. She holds a B.A. and an M.A. in English from Arizona State University and an M.F.A. in creative writing from Vermont College. Her poetry has appeared in many magazines and journals, including American Poetry Review, Antioch Review, Black Warrior Review, Crazyhorse and Ploughshares; her poems published in Poetry Northwest won that magazine's 1989 Theodore Roethke Poetry Prize. Her first volume of poetry, BODY BETRAYER, was published by the Cleveland State University Poetry Center in 1991.

The eucalyptus is rowing in the light of the streetlamp, the lake-water writes letters to St. Paul, and all the new gods are ambushing at an old saltlick... if Goldberg's brilliantly anthropomorphized and frightening badlands of desire and the tragic life of our suburbs, then here's a version of our extinction you'd better accept as published by fire on the pages of lament. --Norman Dubie

In the Badlands of Desire is full of intense, surprising, highly original turns of phrase, and these poems from Beckian Fritz Goldberg's private world fulfill the strong promises of her first book. Definitely a poet to watch and remember. --David Wagoner --David Wagoner