"What would happen to us if we were to undertake the discipline of turning our life entirely and self-consciously into a poem? Through Yukiko, who becomes both a contemplative Buddhist and a geisha skilled in the refinements of sensuous pleasure, Diane Frank allows us to live within the soul of a young woman who has undertaken to create a life imagined and expressed as a poem, in every moment, waking and sleeping, making love or meditating. With its power of language, Blackberries in the Dream House will seduce many readers into considering whether a prosaic life is the only choice we have." Pierre DeLattre Author of Walking on Air and Tales of a Dalai Lama "Diane Frank's exquisite sensibility manifests throughout in Blackberries in the Dream House; it is both erotic and metaphysical. In fact, her great strength is that for her there's no division between the two. The result is this fine lyrical novel." Stephen Dunn Pulitzer Prize Winning Poet

Take an American geisha, a sculptor who knows everything the geishas know about love. Put her in a society that s morally profane, and ask her to find her way. The story is told through the soul of a sculptor who lives her life as a contemporary Aphrodite. Katarina sees everything through the lens of an obscure Indian philosophy, Yoga of the Impossible. Early in the novel, two young teenagers face a trauma that will ripple through their lives unless they turn around and deal with it. You ll meet a tribe of late-blooming artists searching for love on a crooked path. Dripping with fine art, YOGA OF THE IMPOSSIBLE is populated with musicians, dancers, sculptors, radio talk show hosts, and mermaids transforming lunacy into poetry."

Diane Frank presents in Swan Light a finely wrought choreography of poetry that intersects with the music of language and the spirit of dance. These poems of love returning to love, and light returning to light, are a heart gone supernova. Page by page Frank burns a path to her readers' hearts. The alignments are profound, the connections electric from heart to bone, from marrow to star. These are radiant poems, where we earthbound creatures may find simultaneous escape and renewal. Diane Frank is an award-winning poet and author of six books of poems, including Swan Light, Entering the Word Temple and The Winter Life of Shooting Stars. Her friends describe her as a harem of seven women in one very small body. She lives in San Francisco, where she dances, plays cello, and creates her life as an art form. Diane teaches at San Francisco State University and Dominican University. She leads workshops for young writers as a Poet in the School and directs the Blue Light Press On-line Poetry Workshop. She is also a documentary scriptwriter with expertise in Eastern and sacred art. Blackberries in the Dream House, her first novel, won the Chelson Award for Fiction and was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. Yoga of the Impossible, her new novel, will be published soon. To schedule readings, book signings and workshops, and to invite her to speak to your book club, contact: E-mail: [email protected] Website: www.dianefrank.net BOOKS BY DIANE FRANK Yoga of the Impossible Swan Light Blackberries in the Dream House Entering the Word Temple The Winter Life of Shooting Stars The All Night Yemenite Cafe Rhododendron Shedding Its Skin Isis: Poems by Diane Frank "These poems of love returning to love, and light returning to light, are a heart gone supernova. Page by page, Frank burns a path to her readers' hearts. The alignments are profound, the connections electric - from heart to bone, from marrow to star. These are radiant poems, where we earthbound creatures may find simultaneous escape and renewal." -George Wallace, Walt Whitman Birthplace Writer in Residence "There may be those who think of poetry as optional, but Diane Frank's Swan Light does not support that thinking, since it addresses a hunger you didn't know you had, first with trace nutrients of the soul, and as you progress, with the solid food of organic experience. Read, savour and be nourished." -Paul Stokstad, Author of Butterfly Tattoo "In Swan Light Diane Frank has written an irrepressible and epic love story: a love story for lover, artist, parent, child, earth, heaven, spirit, body, and music; a love story for what we are forced to leave behind, and for what we are lucky enough to keep; a love story whose thread is the music of love found in the many narratives and lyrics we live while walking, writing, running, dancing, painting, and praying. This is Diane Frank's most ambitious body of poetry to date, and I say "body" because the word "collection" is so inaccurate. This book is a whole, breathing the same breath as the author, and singing a meaning threaded with intricate images and motifs." -Rustin Larson, author of Crazy Star and The Wine-Dark House "Diane Frank presents in Swan Light a finely wrought choreography of poetry that intersects with the music of language and the spirit of dance. In these poems are whole constellations of imagery, a resplendent aurora of words showering down to light up the geography of the page. If poetry should not mean but be, as MacLeish proclaimed, then these poems by Diane Frank truly are." -Andrena Zawinski, author of Something About, PEN Oakland Award "Here is a book to treasure, to take down frequently for no particular reason, a book to help us remember why we took to poetry in the first place." -Daniel J. Langton, Creative Writing Program, San Francisco State University

Entering the Word Temple is Diane Frank's fifth collection of poems. Tomas Transtromer once said that poems are meeting places for souls. Diane Frank can enter, at will, that region where visions reveal themselves like snapshots. She transcribes these as jewel-like images on the page, through a vocabulary steeped in the natural world and the insistent predilections of the human heart. This is a journey made with luminous eyes. Author bio: Diane Frank is an award winning poet. Her friends describe her as a harem of seven women in one very small body. She has mentored hundreds of writers at San Francisco State University, City College of San Francisco, The University of Vermont, and the Professional Writing Program at MIU in Fairfield, Iowa. Currently, she lives in San Francisco, California - where she dances, plays cello, teaches writing workshops, and creates her life as an art form. She is also a documentary scriptwriter with expertise in Eastern and sacred art. Blackberries in the Dream House, her first novel, was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize.