“Longing itself is nothing but the heart’s open spaces,” writes Mari L’Esperance. And in the open spaces at the heart of these poems is a mother who has disappeared. In a world of war and displacement, illness of the mind and body, imprisonment and violence both historical and personal, the poet leads her readers through a landscape of loss. In unadorned language, she draws readers into the interplay between articulation and silence—and finally offers a vision of redemption.

Mari L’Esperance’s poems have appeared in Pequod, the Beloit Poetry Journal, Barnabe Mountain Review, and Salamander, as well as numerous other journals. Her chapbook, Begin Here, was awarded first prize in the 1999 Sarasota Poetry Theatre Press national chapbook competition.

"In its conception, in its craftsmanship, in its moral bearings, in its production design, in its ambition, and, not least, in its humanity, it is a book that will resonate as only the authentic can."—Poetrykanto.livejournal.com

“Mari L’Esperance accepts all of the responsibilities inherent in the use of language by a serious poet: these poems are faithful to history, to memory, and to conscience, acknowledging the pain implicit in any thoughtful life, even as they celebrate its joys and sensual beauties.”—Edward Smallfield, poet and coeditor of Apogee Press

“In The Darkened Temple, Mari L’Esperance enacts the process of defining a self out of fragments of cultural and personal history, the traumatic disintegration of that self, and its subsequent painful rebuilding: by turns narrative, chantlike, fractured, and lyric, these tender, terrifying, and frank poems fight their way into song.”—Jane Mead, author of The Usable Field

“These stunning lyrics shine light on suffering. Across generations and across cultures, we follow intricate rituals of desire, of myth-making, of mourning. Via corrosive wondering about a disappeared mother, we arrive ‘alone / at the gate of the unbearable.’ And yet these poems, vibrant and necessary, return us to ‘retrievable life,’ to essential human mysteries.”—Peggy Shumaker, author of Just Breathe Normally

“I’m deeply moved by these wrenching, exquisite poems. Like a relentless camera moving ever closer, The Darkened Temple surveys the speaker’s ‘crossing over / from innocence to knowing’—the disappearance of her mother and its consequences for her as she tries to continue. She endures through love, music, and dreams reuniting her with her mother. Their lasting confluence comes in these restorative poems.”—Carole Simmons Oles, author of Waking Stone: Inventions on the Life of Harriet Hosmer

2007 Winner of the Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry