The Occupant now on bookshelves

A book of poetry by Assistant Professor of English Dr. Patricia Murphy is now available in paperback.

The Occupant, published by Finishing Line Press, examines and sometimes celebrates the places and people of southeastern Idaho and central New York, along with a poem or two about New Jersey.

“The poems in Patricia Murphy’s The Occupant map a commonplace world turned on its head. Here, the floorboards creak with the hush of the living while the dead cause a ruckus over lunch. History makes itself glaringly apparent while flesh and blood teeters along highwires of ‘almost real,’” said Martin Vest, author of Dark Knight of the Sybil. “Ghosts have worry lines; people don’t. Mostly, Murphy’s poems offer an uneasy path through a terrain that refuses to compromise. But don’t fret. There’s plenty of humor along the way too. Now inhale. It’s the held breath that holds the impossible, the ‘voice in a jar,’ love.”

Other fellow authors are also weighing in with good reviews.

“Patricia Murphy’s poems in The Occupant are quiet but their edges are fiery with a rage at living in an unsatisfactory world. Each line is laced with wit and courtesy, but her words make small cuts that sting and burn, that expose the delicate skin of desire,” said Lena Bertone, author of Letters to the Devil and Behind This Mirror. “Her poems conspire to convince you that everything is almost okay, but they bulge with a quivering light that disrupts and threatens explosion.”

The Occupant is available directly from Finishing Line Press, Amazon.com, and Barnes and Noble.com, among many other booksellers.