In her second collection of poems, J. Allyn Rosser explores the human condition in all its gloriously valiant pathos. Misery Prefigured dwells on our continual reinventions of self and world and the restless dynamic that vibrates between them.Whether contemplating a failed marriage, a visit from God, or a pearl dropped into a bottle of Prell shampoo, Rosser's wry yet impassioned eye looks hard for a habitable and abiding truth. Alternating between deadpan and dead serious, these poems are often darkly funny, exposing the contradictions inherent in every desire. Misery Prefigured is fueled by a cocky, unsentimental determination to make some consolatory sense of what passes for reality.

“It is Rosser's splendid articulation that impresses initially, not just that her poems are well written, but that they are so resolutely anchored in the idioms of speech and the necessities of the human heart. She ranges fluently from blues riffs to experimental lyrics and narratives, to formal poems of such confidence that they seem at once ancient and contemporary. And if Rosser cares deeply for balance, not the least pleasure in reading Misery Prefigured derives from a rage so fiercely governed that it puts one in mind of Yeats. I do not know of another poet so unafraid of the rhapsodic and yet so capable of high wit, of addressing the world's ‘full frontal mundanity.’”—Rodney Jones, author of Elegy for the Southern Drawl