Erin Murphy is the author of six previous books of poetry, most recently Ancilla, and is co-editor of two anthologies from SUNY Press: Making Poems: Forty Poems with Commentary by the Poets and Creating Nonfiction: Twenty Essays and Interviews with the Writers. Her poems have been published in such journals as Women's Studies Quarterly, The Normal School, The Georgia Review, Field, Southern Humanities Review, and North American Review and featured on Garrison Keillor's The Writer's Almanac. She is Professor of English and Creative Writing at Penn State University, Altoona College.

Other poems by Erin Murphy in Verse Daily:
April 8, 2014:   "Dear Winged" "The opposite of water..."
March 30, 2011:   "Dear Fringe" "Jangle on a flapper..."
July 24, 2004:  "Descartes's Lover" "What of a father for his daughter..."
July 24, 2004:  "Descartes's Lover" "What of a father for his daughter..."

Books by Erin Murphy:

Other poems on the web by Erin Murphy:
Six poems
"After 'The Boating Party'"

Erin Murphy's Website.

Erin Murphy According to Wikipedia.

About Assisted Living:

"A poem is a lens that focuses the light of the known world, and such powers are most evident when a poet dares to innovate in terms of form. Erin Murphy's 'demi-sonnets, ' nimble in their concision and music, deliver both memories and alchemies. Junior high voices rise 'like bird chatter into empty tree / branches'; a paper clip claims its tongue; an aging mother becomes 'a jet burning off / excess fuel.' With each poem, ASSISTED LIVING develops Murphy's concern with the search for intimacy, particularly in moments fraught by illness or injustice. Frank, resilient, these poems insist on glimmering with transformed light."
—Sandra Beasley

"'Only the moment is eternal, 'Czeslaw Milosz famously wrote. The seven-line demi-sonnets in ASSISTED LIVING go by quickly but their staying power is immense--exactly because they contain a whole macrocosm in an instant of time. These poems unfold unflinchingly, in such a short space, and the reader is gifted with constant renewal and surprise. But time's fleet-footedness is also the source of grief: the book is anchored by a series of stunning elegies for the speaker's mother-in-law, a woman who has lived an outsized life--she is 'a novel with too many plots' as well as 'the last scene in a classic film/ frozen on pause.' Murphy chisels words down to their musical rawness, providing us a poetry so well-wrought it is unforgettable, a charm against time's erasure. ASSISTED LIVING does not defeat time--nothing can--but these poems master it through art."
—James Allen Hall

"Erin Murphy's invented form, the demi-sonnet, is small but alarmingly penetrative. Curious? Read 'Good Measure' to feel the slippage in your personal sense of scale and perspective. These poems, simultaneously eerie and straightforward, exert a cumulative effect as they disclose the haunted domestic."
—Claire Bateman