Beckian Fritz Goldberg was born in Hartford, Wisconsin, in 1954 and raised in Arizona. She holds a B.A. and an M.A. in English from Arizona State University and an M.F.A. in creative writing from Vermont College. Her poetry has appeared in many magazines and journals, including American Poetry Review, Antioch Review, Black Warrior Review, Crazyhorse, and Ploughshares; her poems published in Poetry Northwest won that magazine’s 1989 Theodore Roethke Poetry Prize. 

“Few volumes of poetry, let alone first collections, achieve the splendid fusion of intelligence and passion that characterizes Body Betrayer. Beckian Fritz Goldberg has an amazing command of technique, but more importantly an ability to look unflinchingly at the ironies and cruelties of our mysterious existence. Her poems are visionary in a rare and hard-won sense, for she seems to see more than the rest of us— because of our timidity or some lack of character— are willing to permit ourselves. Yet Goldberg’ s broodings invariably transform themselves to a stance that is redemptive rather than despairing. Body Betrayer is a remarkable first book.” –David Wojahn.

“The eucalyptus is rowing in the light of the streetlamp, the lake-water writes letters to St. Paul, and all the new gods are ambushing at an old saltlick. . . if Goldberg’s brilliantly anthropomorphized and frightening badlands of desire and the tragic life of our suburbs, then here’s a version of our extinction you’d better accept as published by fire on the pages of lament.” –Norman Dubie 

“In the Badlands of Desire is full of intense, surprising, highly original turns of phrase, and these poems from Beckian Fritz Goldberg’s private world fulfill the strong promises of her first book. Definitely a poet to watch and remember.” –David Wagoner

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