Love in the Time of Dinosaurs

By Dr. Alexandria Szeman

About Love in the Time of Dinosaurs (award-winning poems)

Love in the Time of Dinosaurs includes all Szeman's non-Holocaust poetry from 1983-2010. Many of the poems begin with a narrator's or character's questioning his expectations of life versus the reality s/he encounters.
In the section Portrait of the Poet as a Woman, the poems, firmly grounded in everyday objects and people, examine marriage, children, and family relationships; eventually expanding the narrator's or character's view to include the universal human condition, especially that of women.

The narrators of all the family dramatic monologues speak poignantly of our desire for acceptance and love, of the fear of betrayal, of loneliness and isolation even when within a relationship, as well as of treasured moments of love, happiness, and desire. Imaginative depictions of mythological, literary, and biblical characters' lives frequently appear.

Szeman's themes are universal, encompassing the perspectives of men and women, adults and children, equally honestly. Though the line-breaks are often syllabic, and the stanzas formal, the language flows musically over the artificially imposed line-breaks. The poems' stories and characters have generated a multitude of fans who claim that, "for the first time, [they] understand contemporary poetry."

Awards
• Chester H. Jones Foundation Poetry Competition, Honorable Commendation, 1985
• The Centennial Review Prize for Poetry (Michael Miller Award) for best poem published in 1984
• The Isabel & Mary Neff Fellowship for Creative Writing, 1984-1985
• Elliston Prize, First Place, 1985
• Elliston Prize, Second Place, 1984
• Elliston Prize, Grand Prize,1983
• Writer's Digest National Writing Competition, Honorable Mention, 1980