The Return Message: Poems

Winner of the 2004 Barnard Women Poets Prize, judged by Jorie Graham, this collection explores loss and regeneration.

Whether searching for the beloved or translating dreams and memory into bearable parables, the speakers of Tessa Rumsey's poems cannot escape their endless longing. Will this uncontainable desire lead to the possession of the other, or to the dissolution of the self? Such are the book's ethical, cultural, and spiritual imperatives.