Patricia Fargnoli, a native of Connecticut, currently lives in New Hampshire. A retired psychotherapist, she holds a B.A. in psychology from Trinity College, a Master's in Social Work from the University of Connecticut and honorably B.F.A. from the New Hampshire Institute of Art. Her first book of poems, Necessary Light, (Utah State University Press, 1999) won the 1999 May Swenson Award. Her second book, Small Songs was published by Pecan Grove Press, 2003 and a chapbook, Lives of Others, came out in 2000 from Oyster River Press. The recipient of a Macdowell Fellowship, she published poems in Poetry, Ploughshares, Mid-American Review, Prairie Schooner, and Nimrod among others. Currently she teaches poetry privately and in the Lifelong Learning Program of Keene State College.

Other poems by Patricia Fargnoli in Verse Daily:
September 16, 2003:  "Roofmen" "Over my head, the roofmen are banging shingles into place..."

About Duties of the Spirit:

"These poems are stamped with an energetic and outgoing attentiveness to the world. This, so much more than just the humming examination of the self, is what makes writing a sacred thing. Who does this is a true poet, and few do it better than Patricia Fargnoli."
—Mary Oliver

"Patricia Fargnoli's poems are oxymoronic: quietly earsplitting, peacefully high-spirited, wildly unassuming. They get under your skin because they are replete with the experience of her richly and deeply lived life, her compassionate attention, her love of language. Technically they are unshakable. Like joy, beauty, fear, pain, gain and loss, these core subjects of the poet's art Fargnoli returns to repeatedly, Fargnoli's poems open upon us, then open in us. We are anchored, ruffled, soothed, and ultimately expanded. She makes us believe all over again, in the goodness of art."
—Gray Jacobik