Woods etc.

These poems give voice to objects -- stone, wood, water. She is inspiring, a poet's poet, and I am very taken by her organic groupings of poems. She has short series related by subject matter -- e.g. stones -- and these are as various as a stone given voice, a poem about Sisyphus, one about throwing skimming stones. Some of the lines are knock-out perceptive -- in the poems about Sisyphus, "and the real effort is to stare // unreconciled at how the same things are. . . ". Line breaks are subtle and powerful, her craft organic and not from a textbook. In one poem she varies short and long lines, with the short lines being generally monosyllable words and describing a sense of action, the longer lines bearing multisyllabic and complex show more words and examining something: "Green shines rain // like a looked at thing being turned in all directions"

Love this book. Recommended to me some time ago by poet James Allen Hall. I wasn't ready for it then. I am now. show less