Crab Orchard Series in Poetry Year of the Snake Poems by Lee Ann Roripaugh     March 2004 paper, 0-8093-2569-1, $14.95 80 pages, 6 x 9 Poetry    Copublished with the Crab Orchard Review Jon Tribble, series editor   “Lee Ann Roripaugh’s book is one of the strongest, most illuminating volumes in [the] Crab Orchard Award series. Year of the Snake, Roripaugh’s second book, is full of surprises and bristling imagery and line work, and it contains a fascinating sequence of poems on numerous varied topics. . . . When Roripaugh reveals more than the poem might hint at upon first reading, she keeps going, and it is a joyous ride to experience each and every line.” —The Bloomsbury Review “‘Does this mean each moment is an astonishment?’ Lee Ann Roripaugh’s question is answered over and over again with a resounding ‘Yes!’ in this stunning new collection, Year of the Snake. Out of the shimmer and sparkle of the insects and fish she remembers with such jeweled precision, she recreates her childhood in Wyoming in one exquisite poem after another. A child of two cultures, Japan and the American West, Roripaugh looks back in amazement at the details of her lost world of hummingbirds, snakes, Nanking cherries, falling stars, and antelope jerky. As she comes to understand the unappeasable hunger that drove both her and the Yellow Monarch out of paradise, her adult yearning is transformed into spiritual resurrection.” —Maura Stanton, author of Glacier Wine   “This is Lee Ann Roripaugh at the height of her powers. Precise and unforgettable images about family and community make these poems sing and stay with you days after you have gently put the book down. She is a ‘fish with a third, wide eye’ delivering unflinching truths. I believe that Roripaugh is one of the dozen or so best poets writing in America today.” —Nick Carbó, author of Secret Asian Man   “What lyrical gems. Poems like diamonds faceted with the Japanese-American diaspora, our lives scattered and thrust into Lee Ann Roripaugh’s utterly exquisite canvas of sky and pen.” —Lois-Ann Yamanaka, author of Heads by Harry   In her second collection of poems, Lee Ann Roripaugh probes themes of mixed-race female identities, evoking the molting processes of snakes and insects who shed their skins and shells as an ongoing metaphor for transformation of self. Intertwining contemporary renditions of traditional Japanese myths and fairy tales with poems that explore the landscape of childhood and early adolescence, she blurs the boundaries between myth and memory, between real and imagined selves. This collection explores cultural, psychological, and physical liminalities and exposes the diasporic arc cast by first-generation Asian American mothers and their second-generation daughters, revealing a desire for metamorphosis of self through time, geography, culture, and myth.   from “Snake Song”   I was born in the year of the snake and maybe this is why I speak with a forked tongue. I’ve followed   the vague sibilant thread of the voice in my head curling into a tangled snarl   of roots, grass, stems and leaves, so that when I open my mouth to talk, a strange song, not mine, comes tumbling out.   Ai-noko, half-caste, I tilt my head in the mirror first this way then that—Horikoshi   cheekbones, Caucasian nose, my ojii-san’s serious eyebrows feathering like ink strokes over eyes   not quite green, not quite brown, in the tranquil white moon of my face. My blood runs hot and cold.   Lee Ann Roripaugh's first collection of poems, Beyond Heart Mountain, was a 1998 winner of the National Poetry Series Award. She is the recipient of a 2003 Artist Fellowship from the Archibald Bush Foundation, the Randall Jarrell International Poetry Prize, and the Academy of American Poets Prize. Her poems have appeared in Ploughshares, North American Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Crab Orchard Review, and in the anthology Asian American Poetry: The Next Generation. She is an assistant professor of English at the University of South Dakota.