Cleopatra Mathis is Professor of English and Creative Writing at Dartmouth College. Her poems have appeared in many publications including The Georgia Review, Louisiana Literature, Ploughshares, Poetry, River City, Seneca Review, Smartish Pace, The Southern Review, Tri-Quarterly, The Yale Review, and Washington Square.

About What To Tip The Boatman?:

"There are those rarest of human beings among us who themselves embody so much myth, history, and poetry that what they do includes a depth of profane and sacred meaning, of before and after, whatever the present event. Cleopatra Mathis is such a woman and poet in an anti-heroic age, a poet who comes back from hell, from where all heroes must go and return.

Much of this remarkable book of poems is about mothering—the poet as mother of a troubled and gifted daughter. These are 'household' poems in the sense that The Iliad is about the households of Troy. The modern Greeks sometimes say that a person is 'put twice in the fire,' as iron is put twice in the fire to strengthen it. Cleopatra Mathis is such a poet. The reader has reason to be grateful to her for this lyrical iron."