Stranger in You: Selected Poems and New

Mary di Michele's writing has been described by critics as "both contemporary and timeless", "fiercely intelligent", "feminine, tough, ironic and unsentimental", and as the work of a "mind at the farthest reaches of itself". Drawing from nearly twenty years of published and unpublished work, Stranger in You is gathered primarily around the recurring themes of gender, language, and cultural identity. Di Michele believes with Kristeva that the self is a strange land of borders and otherness ceaselessly constructed and deconstructed. These poems are more than immigrant songs or nostalgia for the old world or mere wonder at the new; they are interrogations, revelations, of the stranger, of the uncanny, in us all.