The Rose
Poems
Graywolf · Print & ebook · April 15, 2025
In The Rose, award-winning poet Ariana Reines navigates the intersection of power and surrender.
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- Who it’s for
- These poems meet erotic love and spirituality with wryness, vulnerability, and a taste for paradox.
- Themes
- Power and surrender, Gender performance and vulnerability, Erotic love and spirituality
- Genres
- Love Poetry, Women Poets, Inspirational & Religious Poetry
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Start with this bookAbout this book
In The Rose, award-winning poet Ariana Reines navigates the intersection of power and surrender. Drawing on the history of “romance” as the troubadours knew it and the titular flower’s ancient allegories for sexuality and mystery, Reines plunges into feminine archetypes to explore masculine pain: “I have always liked helpless / & terrible men because they break my mind.”
Continue reading
In these poems, inherited ideologies of gender performance are replaced with bold vulnerability: paradoxes of power and surrender transmute the speaker’s understanding of suffering, desire, and the soul. The voice in The Rose is wry and bare, approaching the connection between erotic love and spirituality with humor. Investigating war, maternity, violent sensuality, and the role of language in magical acts, Reines is unafraid to uncover the “secret / & terrible shovelings / Of love,” and the result is a bloody and pulsing, sexy and unabashed bloom.
Desire and Surrender
These poems meet erotic love and spirituality with wryness, vulnerability, and a taste for paradox.
Come here for
- Poems probing power, gender, desire, and the soul
- A wry, bare voice with humor amid violent sensuality
Expect
- Romance, feminine archetypes, and the flower’s ancient allegories
- A restless interplay of suffering, surrender, and spiritual longing
Where it sits
| Love Poetry | 79% |
|---|---|
| Women Poets | 32% |
| Inspirational & Religious Poetry | 27% |
Percentages are BookFrontier’s reading of the book.
Publisher categories
- American Poetry
- LGBTQ+ Poetry
- Love Poetry
- Authors
- Ariana Reines
- Publisher
- Graywolf
- Published
- April 15, 2025
- Format
- Print & ebook
- Theme
- Power and surrender · Gender performance and vulnerability · Erotic love and spirituality
- Reading lane
- American Poetry