Just Published The Jaguars That Prowl Our Dreams

Jaguars contains the best poems from my previous 7 collections plus 47 new poems, including more poems about the beauty and terror of the jungles of Brazil plus a series of very short poems about life on the farm in Western Kentucky where I spent summers when I was a child–a place where hogs are homicidal and 80-year-old women are tough enough to fight them off with brooms.

 The poems are both accessible and very wide-ranging. You’ll find passionate love poems; lyrical descriptions of the rain forests of the upper Amazon; a section called A Threatening Letter to Shakespeare in which Juliet talks about how her marriage to Romeo didn’t work out; poems from the early years of the Women’s Movement that sound as if they could have been written yesterday; poems about Goddesses, Carmen Miranda, fevers, samba, and the Kama Sutra of Kindness. There is even a poem that takes you to the place where the Ghost Jaguars live.

 So far the response to these poems has been encouraging. The Jaguars That Prowl Our Dreams is being considered for several important prizes (my lips have to be sealed here), and poets I greatly admire like Marge Piercy, Jane Hirshfield, Al Young, D. Nurkse, and Maxine Hong Kingston are saying good things about it.

If you read the poems in Jaguars and like them and honestly feel you can do so, please go to Amazon.com and give the book as many stars as you feel it deserves. This will help other people know about Jaguars and encourage them to read and enjoy the poems.

Praise for Mary Mackey’s The Jaguars That Prowl Our Dreams

“Mary Mackey’s poems are powerful, beautiful, and have extraordinary range. This is the poetry of a woman who has lived richly and felt deeply. May her concern for the planet help save it.”   —Maxine Hong Kingston

“Always Mackey’s eye is drawn to the marginalized, the poor, the outcast, the trivialized, the ones who stand at the center of the human adventure. [In] The Jaguars That Prowl Our Dreams, Mary Mackey has created a oeuvre, wilder, more open to change with each passing year.” —D. Nurkse

“Mackey’s poems crackle with powerful, lush energy.”   –Marge Piercy

“Mackey’s crisp-edged perceptions are set down with a sensuous, compassionate, and utterly unflinching eye.” –Jane Hirshfield

“Her fine work deserves ever widening exposure.”  –Al Young, California Poet Laureate Emeritus

“It is difficult to resist the temptation to compare Mary Mackey to Elizabeth Bishop. Both poets are stunningly imagistic, musical, and awake to topography, sociology, and the world beyond.”  –The Huffington Post