The Last Stone in the Circle
Winner of the 2015 Red Mountain Poetry Prize. Based on eyewitness accounts, "The Last Stone in the Circle" chronicles experiences of prisoners in a WWII German work re-education camp. Delving into the murkiness of human experience in the face of suffering, the poems consider the complicated choices people make in impossibly difficult circumstances and explore the sheer resilience of survival.
Bio
Irena Praitis holds a PhD in English (1999) and a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing (2001) from Arizona State University.
Praise for this book
In her extraordinary book 'The Last Stone in the Circle,' Irena Praitis examines the nature of evil as a central paradox of human experience. The Holocaust is the poet's occasion for an appraisal of social destruction. This serious, substantive topic is an essential addition to the genre of tragic literature.
Denise Low Kansas Poet Laureate 2007-09
This powerful debut sears itself in memory, not by its vivid descriptions making the unimaginable painfully real, but with its relentless focus on seemingly inescapable moral complicity. Such questioning — and her universal compassion — argue eloquently the importance of Praitis's achievement.
April Ossmann Author of "Anxious Music"
