True, False, None of the Above

True, False, None of the Above poetically explores what it means to write, read, and teach literature in a world that--at turns--rejects, embraces, or shrugs indifferently at the spiritual.
This is a book on the intersection of words and belief, on how books mark and mirror our lives, and how sometimes the journey we experience on the page leads us to faith.


"In True, False, None of the Above, Maddox offers us a brilliant, witty, and vulnerable garland of poems. Here is the voice of a teacher, a poet, a mother and wife, a woman of faith bearing witness to a deep and lasting Truth, summoning--among others--the likes of Dante, Hopkins, Dickinson, Eliot, and Frost, each calling out to the other, often at scintillant cross-purposes, all set choiring to this magisterial teacher's gentle bidding.
--Paul Mariani, University Professor of English, Boston College; author of God and the Imagination: On Poets, Poetry, and the Ineffable

"In the preface to her book True, False, None of the Above, Maddox describes the experience of literature--whether reading, teaching, or creating it--as a 'confrontation with reality.' And her poems indeed confront a range of uneasy truths, from adultery and natural disasters to tooth extraction and raising teens. Maddox builds on the shared imagination of writers and readers, richly and deftly, to deepen and challenge our spirits."
--Tania Runyan, author of Second Sky

"In some of these poems, Marjorie Maddox riffs on the poetry of other writers. Sometimes she sings like an angel, even about illness and death. She wields forms brilliantly, and she tells delicious stories about what goes on in her classroom. Everybody who relishes good poetry should buy this book. But if you're a teacher--or if you've ever sat in a classroom anywhere--True, False, None of the Above will make you laugh out loud."
--Jeanne Murray Walker, Professor of English, University of Delaware; author of Shadow & Light: Literature and the Life of Faith

"In poem after poem Marjorie Maddox creates a rich environment in which the best teaching (and she is always a teacher) takes place in dialogue, even though conversations are not always neatly resolved. But she also consistently and convincingly points to what we need: 'The real, the spiritual, the Real.'"
--Jill Baumgaertner, Author, What Cannot Be Fixed


Sage Graduate Fellow at Cornell University (MFA) and professor of English at Lock Haven University, Marjorie Maddox has published ten collections of poetry--most recently Local News from Someplace Else--four children's books, the short story collection What She Was Saying, and over 450 stories, poems, and essays in journals and anthologies. The recipient of numerous awards, she also is coeditor of Common Wealth: Contemporary Poets on Pennsylvania. For more information, please see www.marjoriemaddox.com.