Unbound Edition Press today announced it will publish J. Allyn Rosser’s fifth collection of poems, Chronic Transience. The title is scheduled for publication in October 2025.
Rosser’s fourth collection of poems, Mimi’s Trapeze, appeared in 2014 from the University of Pittsburgh Press. Her work has been awarded the Morse Prize, the Crab Orchard Award, the New Criterion Poetry Prize, and Poetry magazine’s Bock and Wood prizes. She has been the recipient of fellowships from the Lannan Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Ohio Arts Council. She taught in Ohio University’s Creative Writing Program for many years, where she also served as editor in chief of New Ohio Review.
Rosanna Warren wrote of Mimi’s Trapeze, “In Rosser’s poems, wit dances with grimness, and sorrow steps out stylishly dressed to kill. But their flash doesn’t obscure the darkling power of these poems; this is a gallant, inventive, large-hearted book.”
Peter Campion, executive editor at Unbound Edition Press, acquired Chronic Transience for the house and is editing the work. He writes, “Rosser’s formal skill is nonpareil. She’s a master of rhyme and meter, sentence and line. She can get more liveliness into a single word than many poets achieve in an entire poem. But her virtuosity always serves emotional truth, whether that’s the hilarity of ‘Notes on the Latin,’ the insouciance of ‘Evening Primrose,’ or the poignancy of ‘Assisted Living.’ Chronic Transience, as the title suggests, is a book about facing mortality, and yet these poems themselves seem indestructible.”
Patrick Davis, publisher and editor in chief at Unbound Edition Press, said, “There come rare moments when utterly arresting work appears, as if delivered from another realm. Rosser’s Chronic Transience marks such a moment, bringing to this world poems so unexpected and unfamiliar that their moving depths signal truths we didn’t know we had missed.”
