Karen Rigby is the author of Festival Bone, a 2004 chapbook published by Adastra Press. She received fellowships from the Vermont Studio Center in 2006 and from the National Endowment for the Arts in 2007.

Other poems by Karen Rigby in Verse Daily:
October 12, 2005:   "Sunflower" " Before my desires..."

Books by Karen Rigby: Savage Machinery, Festival Bone

Other poems on the web by Karen Rigby:
"Edward Hopper’s Women"
"Norma Desmond Descending the Staircase as Salome"
"Dear Reader"
"The Lover"

Karen Rigby's Website.

About Savage Machinery:

"In Karen Rigby's poems we are in a world far from innocence. We are, in fact, in the `savage machinery' of the world after the fall, a world stricken with-beauty and flaw. Whether writing about the 'heart's declensions' in the voice of Norma Desmond, or about the `multiple selves' of the onion, or the 'dumb abandonment' of Da Vinci's flying machine, Rigby's poems negotiate the balance between wonder and woundedness. Rigby s eye is phenomenally attuned to everything it sees, and even past what's seen, to the `rooms behind / the ones you know. The poems are vividly strange, and utterly heartbreaking."
—Rick Barot

"The poems of Savage Machinery are driven b both a keen sense of rhythm and a confident announcement of Rigby's metaphoric visions of the world. `The pure, explosive signature of her poetry aspires toward Blake's admonition to see not with but thro the eye,' and because of this imaginative ambition (conveyed with music and grace), the poems reveal a vivid sensual world that seems both wholly familiar and holy strange. Simply, a stunning chapbook."
—Tod Marshall

"It's no accident that some of these poems reference Edward Hopper. Rigby's language evokes his sparse, barren landscapes where emptiness is tangible, menacing, and beautiful. Her poems are so packed they bloom at the touch. The results are stunning."
—Jim Daniels