A Fire in Her Brain

A profound and moving sequence of poems exploring genius and mental illness through the lives of Lucia Joyce, Virginia Woolf, and Sylvia Plath

A Fire in Her Brain examines the porous boundary between the spark of genius and a mind in conflagration in the lives and works of Lucia Joyce, Virginia Woolf, and Sylvia Plath, women whose imaginative gifts were also a Cassandrian curse. Penetrating, meticulous, and tender, Jennifer Franklin’s poems capture her subjects’ brimming intellects, ardent keenings, and resilient but ultimately corruptible minds and bodies in elegies (chiefly in epistolary mode) for genius departed or abandoned too soon. Interwoven through the collection are lyrical meditations on Franklin’s own artistic struggles, her battles with life-threatening disease and invisible disabilities, and the difficulties of caring for her disabled daughter. What emerges is a powerful and affecting reflection on the pain and pleasure of devoting a life to making art, the agony of being thwarted in that pursuit, and the sustaining hope that art can provide, especially during times of personal and political upheaval.