​"Alyse Bensel’s Rare Wondrous Things is a marvel: a work of essential feminist revision, a portrait of the artist and naturalist Maria Sibylla Merian, and a book of poems that deepens our understanding of history." —Nicole Cooley, author of Of Marriage

"Filled with musically-crafted language and sparkling imagery, Bensel deftly weaves together ekphrasis, docupoetics, entomological knowledge, and cultural poetics in this engagingly riveting and timely poetic biography." —Lee Ann Roripaugh, Author of tsunami vs. the fukushima 50

"Alyse Bensel's poems chart a way to understand a life obscured and cocooned by class and gender. These poems transform the details and the mysteries behind them—through art—into wondrous flight." —Elizabeth Bradfield, author of Toward Antarctica