About Luray Gross...

Luray Gross grew up on a Pennsylvania dairy farm in a household full of music and books. She is the author of three previous collections of poetry, Forenoon, Elegant Reprieve (1995–96 Still Waters Press Poetry Chapbook Competition winner), and The Perfection of Zeros. She was the 2002 Poet Laureate of Bucks County and resident faculty at the 2006 Frost Place Festival and Conference on Poetry in Franconia, NH. She was the recipient of a fellowship in poetry from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts and, in 2000, named one of the Council’s Distinguished Teaching Artists. A storyteller as well as poet, she has worked with thousands of students and teachers over the last twenty-some years.

Read about her new book of poetry, With This Body and her previous collection, Lift.

A SAMPLE POEM

With This Body

for JC

With this body I meet your body.
With your body you meet my body.

Beyond each,
reach of wave and quantum,
canyon rift, cliff.

Apart from other,
body grieves.

Remembered words
do not suffice.

Yet let us speak.
Let our words press
their charges, rattle the heart.

Death, wait a while longer.
There is so much to do.