Poems that Glow and Shimmer
Cell Traffic: New and Selected Poems by Heid Erdrich; Sky Thick With Fireflies by Ethna McKiernan; and Book of Fire by Cary Waterman
Appeared in the Minneapolis Star Tribune | June 23, 2012
"Cell Traffic: New and Selected Poems," by Heid E. Erdrich
In this capacious book, Erdrich draws a through-line from the ancient to the contemporary world with DNA. For Erdrich, DNA contains messages both biological and spiritual.
The book's title comes from the scientific term describing how genetic material passes between the fetus and the mother -- resulting in "microchimerism," or the presence of cells within our bodies that are not genetically our own. READ MORE
Appeared in the Minneapolis Star Tribune | June 23, 2012
"Cell Traffic: New and Selected Poems," by Heid E. Erdrich
In this capacious book, Erdrich draws a through-line from the ancient to the contemporary world with DNA. For Erdrich, DNA contains messages both biological and spiritual.
The book's title comes from the scientific term describing how genetic material passes between the fetus and the mother -- resulting in "microchimerism," or the presence of cells within our bodies that are not genetically our own. READ MORE
Devil in the Grove details Thurgood Marshall’s battle with racist sheriff
Devil in the Grove by Gilbert King
Appeared in the Dallas Morning News | May 29, 2012
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The history of civil rights often is told as a story of stunning victories and history-making moments, such as the Brown vs. Board of Education ruling, engineered by Thurgood Marshall and the NAACP, that declared separate is not equal.
Left out are defeats, tragedies and the racism that continued long after the landmark events. For the people of Lake County, Fla., humiliation and segregation continued for nearly two decades after the Brown decision under the racist reign of Sheriff Willis McCall.
In Devil in the Grove, historian Gilbert King offers a gripping account of the famous case that brought McCall’s brutality to the nation’s attention. READ MORE
Appeared in the Dallas Morning News | May 29, 2012
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The history of civil rights often is told as a story of stunning victories and history-making moments, such as the Brown vs. Board of Education ruling, engineered by Thurgood Marshall and the NAACP, that declared separate is not equal.
Left out are defeats, tragedies and the racism that continued long after the landmark events. For the people of Lake County, Fla., humiliation and segregation continued for nearly two decades after the Brown decision under the racist reign of Sheriff Willis McCall.
In Devil in the Grove, historian Gilbert King offers a gripping account of the famous case that brought McCall’s brutality to the nation’s attention. READ MORE
Repeat the Flesh in Numbers by Kris Bigalk
Appeared in the Minneapolis Star Tribune | May 20, 2012
In her debut collection, Kris Bigalk compares gene replication to "a Bach fugue, a Hanon exercise / precision tempered with passion." Bigalk's poems are the fugue's opposite: full of a passion for experience -- both joyful and tragic -- but their passion is tempered with the precision of well-chosen comparisons.
Music is "tremors on a silken web"; "Memory is an / orbiting planet that will never reach me"; "nerves like wrinkled laundry." Bigalk, who designed and directs the creative writing program at Normandale Community College, has a consistent style, but the book is never monotonous. Throughout her collection she shifts in perspective and tone. READ MORE
In her debut collection, Kris Bigalk compares gene replication to "a Bach fugue, a Hanon exercise / precision tempered with passion." Bigalk's poems are the fugue's opposite: full of a passion for experience -- both joyful and tragic -- but their passion is tempered with the precision of well-chosen comparisons.
Music is "tremors on a silken web"; "Memory is an / orbiting planet that will never reach me"; "nerves like wrinkled laundry." Bigalk, who designed and directs the creative writing program at Normandale Community College, has a consistent style, but the book is never monotonous. Throughout her collection she shifts in perspective and tone. READ MORE
The Alphabet Not Unlike the World by Katrina Vandenberg
Appeared in the Minneapolis Star Tribune | May 19, 2012
In "Cretaceous Moth Trapped in Amber," Katrina Vandenberg describes a "little moth caught forever in the last moment of before ... And in millions of years / the moon has not changed."
With the dominance of the personal lyric, much contemporary poetry feels like that moth: a moment frozen in time and sealed off from the world as if the poet is afraid they will get it wrong if they venture outside their own experience.
In her accomplished second collection, "The Alphabet Not Unlike the World," Vandenberg is not afraid of getting it wrong. READ MORE
In "Cretaceous Moth Trapped in Amber," Katrina Vandenberg describes a "little moth caught forever in the last moment of before ... And in millions of years / the moon has not changed."
With the dominance of the personal lyric, much contemporary poetry feels like that moth: a moment frozen in time and sealed off from the world as if the poet is afraid they will get it wrong if they venture outside their own experience.
In her accomplished second collection, "The Alphabet Not Unlike the World," Vandenberg is not afraid of getting it wrong. READ MORE
The Reindeer Camps by Barton Sutter
Appeared in the Minneapolis Star Tribune | May 18, 2012
"The Reindeer Camps" proves that Barton Sutter is a virtuoso of form, meter and humor. Aware that metrical poems are unfashionable, he jokes of forgotten poets, "They, too, believed in metaphor and rhyme."
This collection of light verse consists mostly of nature poems reminiscing about rural childhood, praising the landscape or celebrating the seasons.
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Especially lively are his portraits of animals. A mink is "quick as a fart," a woodpecker has a "lightning streak of white," and an otter "[smelts] the bones" of a walleye in his "Bessemer belly." READ MORE
"The Reindeer Camps" proves that Barton Sutter is a virtuoso of form, meter and humor. Aware that metrical poems are unfashionable, he jokes of forgotten poets, "They, too, believed in metaphor and rhyme."
This collection of light verse consists mostly of nature poems reminiscing about rural childhood, praising the landscape or celebrating the seasons.
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Especially lively are his portraits of animals. A mink is "quick as a fart," a woodpecker has a "lightning streak of white," and an otter "[smelts] the bones" of a walleye in his "Bessemer belly." READ MORE
Irish Verse: Seamus Heaney revisits County Derry
Human Chain by Seamus Heaney
Appeared in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette | March 29, 2012
Just as Frost limned the landscape of rural New England, Mr. Heaney uses the character of County Derry as a means to explore universal subjects.
He was born in 1939 in a rural village in Northern Ireland and discovered Frost as well as Irish poet Patrick Kavanagh while teaching in Belfast. "From them I learned that my local County Derry childhood experience -- which I had considered archaic and irrelevant to the modern world -- was to be trusted," he said.
With poetry rooted in the remembered landscape of his childhood, Mr. Heaney cemented his reputation as one of the leading poets of his generation, even before winning the Nobel Prize for literature in 1995. READ MORE
Appeared in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette | March 29, 2012
Just as Frost limned the landscape of rural New England, Mr. Heaney uses the character of County Derry as a means to explore universal subjects.
He was born in 1939 in a rural village in Northern Ireland and discovered Frost as well as Irish poet Patrick Kavanagh while teaching in Belfast. "From them I learned that my local County Derry childhood experience -- which I had considered archaic and irrelevant to the modern world -- was to be trusted," he said.
With poetry rooted in the remembered landscape of his childhood, Mr. Heaney cemented his reputation as one of the leading poets of his generation, even before winning the Nobel Prize for literature in 1995. READ MORE
Engimatic Emily: Vendler unlocks door to poet's meaning
Dickinson: Selected Poems and Commentaries by Helen Vendler
Appeared in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette | March 29, 2012
Emily Dickinson writes that the poet "distills ... Attar so immense/From the familiar species/That perished by the Door," meaning, they harvest perfume from flowers everyone else disregards.
A good critic performs a similar task by teasing out the essence of a poem from details most readers overlook.
Helen Vendler provides clear commentary, uncluttered by fashionable and hyphenated literary theory, on 150 poems by one of the most enigmatic American poets. READ MORE
Appeared in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette | March 29, 2012
Emily Dickinson writes that the poet "distills ... Attar so immense/From the familiar species/That perished by the Door," meaning, they harvest perfume from flowers everyone else disregards.
A good critic performs a similar task by teasing out the essence of a poem from details most readers overlook.
Helen Vendler provides clear commentary, uncluttered by fashionable and hyphenated literary theory, on 150 poems by one of the most enigmatic American poets. READ MORE
Pitch by Todd Boss
Appeared in the Minneapolis Star Tribune | February 4, 2012
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In "It Is Enough to Enter," the opening poem of "Pitch," Todd Boss writes, "You don't have to / understand / the liturgy or know history / to feel holy / in a gallery or presbytery."While the poem cites "the templar / halls of museums" and "chambers of churches," it also reveals something about Boss' attitude toward poetry: that you need nothing more than your head and your heart to appreciate it.
Boss has been working to expand the audience for poetry by chipping away at the idea that it's an elite art for those with academic training. To that end, he helped found and now co-directs Motionpoems, a nonprofit initiative that creates animated shorts based on contemporary poems in order to help them garner a wider audience. READ MORE
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In "It Is Enough to Enter," the opening poem of "Pitch," Todd Boss writes, "You don't have to / understand / the liturgy or know history / to feel holy / in a gallery or presbytery."While the poem cites "the templar / halls of museums" and "chambers of churches," it also reveals something about Boss' attitude toward poetry: that you need nothing more than your head and your heart to appreciate it.
Boss has been working to expand the audience for poetry by chipping away at the idea that it's an elite art for those with academic training. To that end, he helped found and now co-directs Motionpoems, a nonprofit initiative that creates animated shorts based on contemporary poems in order to help them garner a wider audience. READ MORE
Lovely Chronicles of Everyday Life
Three collections by poets with Twin Cities ties depict the world as both wondrous and accessible.
Appeared in the Minneapolis Star Tribune | December 24, 2011
For readers reluctant to read poetry because they "just don't get it," three books by poets with Twin Cities ties offer limpid poems that chronicle daily life in accessible language.
"What's Left Is the Singing," by Mary Kay Rummel (Blue Light Press) Rummel's sixth volume takes readers through the author's time in a convent and into her life after she left -- marriage, children and travels. The lure that drew her from the convent was art; she heard a "wind-aroused river" in a recording of Van Cliburn playing Tchaikovsky, and snuck off to read fiction that the Mother Superior forbade. READ MORE
Appeared in the Minneapolis Star Tribune | December 24, 2011
For readers reluctant to read poetry because they "just don't get it," three books by poets with Twin Cities ties offer limpid poems that chronicle daily life in accessible language.
"What's Left Is the Singing," by Mary Kay Rummel (Blue Light Press) Rummel's sixth volume takes readers through the author's time in a convent and into her life after she left -- marriage, children and travels. The lure that drew her from the convent was art; she heard a "wind-aroused river" in a recording of Van Cliburn playing Tchaikovsky, and snuck off to read fiction that the Mother Superior forbade. READ MORE
Phillis Wheatley: Biography of a Genius in Bondage
Appeared in the Dallas Morning News | December 9, 2011
Phillis Wheatley was about 7 in 1761 when she endured the Middle Passage. During her two-month journey she watched a quarter of her fellows perish and thrown in the sea. Once in America, her owners, a well-off Boston couple, treated her more like a pet than a servant, showing off this precocious girl to their friends.
At first her ability to write poetry was an entertaining curiosity, but it eventually brought her international acclaim and secured her freedom.
Her poem “On Being Brought from Africa to America” doesn’t relate the harrowing details of her kidnapping, rather it seems to sing its praise. READ MORE
Phillis Wheatley was about 7 in 1761 when she endured the Middle Passage. During her two-month journey she watched a quarter of her fellows perish and thrown in the sea. Once in America, her owners, a well-off Boston couple, treated her more like a pet than a servant, showing off this precocious girl to their friends.
At first her ability to write poetry was an entertaining curiosity, but it eventually brought her international acclaim and secured her freedom.
Her poem “On Being Brought from Africa to America” doesn’t relate the harrowing details of her kidnapping, rather it seems to sing its praise. READ MORE
Things to Say to a Dead Man by Jane Yolen
Appeared in the Minneapolis Star Tribune | October 12, 2011
In her first collection for adults, renowned children's author Jane Yolen limns her experience with loss in straightforward and clear lyrics. The poems' simplicity makes them all the more poignant; she depicts her experience, including the mundane tasks following a death (packing up clothes, buying a headstone) plainly, unobstructed by wordplay. Though it contains nothing new or surprising about the grieving process, the book is finely wrought.
She writes of her husband's absence: "[It] breaks me open every morning, / splitting me like a well-placed wedge." But the poems are restrained and well crafted. Sadness rendered beautiful: "The hem of my heart wears the same frost." READ MORE
In her first collection for adults, renowned children's author Jane Yolen limns her experience with loss in straightforward and clear lyrics. The poems' simplicity makes them all the more poignant; she depicts her experience, including the mundane tasks following a death (packing up clothes, buying a headstone) plainly, unobstructed by wordplay. Though it contains nothing new or surprising about the grieving process, the book is finely wrought.
She writes of her husband's absence: "[It] breaks me open every morning, / splitting me like a well-placed wedge." But the poems are restrained and well crafted. Sadness rendered beautiful: "The hem of my heart wears the same frost." READ MORE
Teenage Mom Meets Medea
Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward
Appeared in the Dallas Morning News | September 4, 2011
The ancient Greek tale of Medea, who slaughters her children to punish her husband for taking a new bride, isn’t What to Expect When You’re Expecting. But this is the tale Esch — 14 and pregnant — keeps returning to in Jesmyn Ward’s searing second novel.
Medea makes sense in Esch’s world, where love exacts a steep price and motherhood is a dangerous and bloody business. READ MORE
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Review also appeared in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
READ MY INTERVIEW WITH WARD IN THE PARIS REVIEW
Appeared in the Dallas Morning News | September 4, 2011
The ancient Greek tale of Medea, who slaughters her children to punish her husband for taking a new bride, isn’t What to Expect When You’re Expecting. But this is the tale Esch — 14 and pregnant — keeps returning to in Jesmyn Ward’s searing second novel.
Medea makes sense in Esch’s world, where love exacts a steep price and motherhood is a dangerous and bloody business. READ MORE
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Review also appeared in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
READ MY INTERVIEW WITH WARD IN THE PARIS REVIEW
Fall Higher by Dean Young
Appeared in the Los Angeles Times | June 12, 2011
"All the new thinking is about loss," Robert Hass begins his 1979 poem "Meditation at Lagunitas." Structuralism had put poets in a bind by arguing that words are meaningless symbols assigned random significance by culture. "A word is elegy to what it signifies," Hass muses, insisting on making connections where theory argues there are none.
In "Fall Higher," his 13th collection of poetry, Dean Young uses a different tactic: "All the new thinking / was about collision," he writes with a wink to Hass.
READ MORE
"All the new thinking is about loss," Robert Hass begins his 1979 poem "Meditation at Lagunitas." Structuralism had put poets in a bind by arguing that words are meaningless symbols assigned random significance by culture. "A word is elegy to what it signifies," Hass muses, insisting on making connections where theory argues there are none.
In "Fall Higher," his 13th collection of poetry, Dean Young uses a different tactic: "All the new thinking / was about collision," he writes with a wink to Hass.
READ MORE
The deceptively simple world of Robert Bly
Talking Into the Ear of a Donkey by Robert Bly
Appeared in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune | May 6, 2011
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In a note to his first book of poetry, "Silence in the Snowy Fields," published in 1962, Robert Bly wrote that he was "interested in the connection between poetry and simplicity. ... The fundamental world of poetry is an inward world."
Nearly 50 years and 30 volumes later, simplicity remains a primary concern for this Minnesota poet; his gaze, however, has shifted outward. The clear diction of "Talking Into the Ear of a Donkey" makes accessible its transcendental themes, including the wisdom of the animal world and the spiritual connection between humankind and nature. READ MORE
Appeared in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune | May 6, 2011
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In a note to his first book of poetry, "Silence in the Snowy Fields," published in 1962, Robert Bly wrote that he was "interested in the connection between poetry and simplicity. ... The fundamental world of poetry is an inward world."
Nearly 50 years and 30 volumes later, simplicity remains a primary concern for this Minnesota poet; his gaze, however, has shifted outward. The clear diction of "Talking Into the Ear of a Donkey" makes accessible its transcendental themes, including the wisdom of the animal world and the spiritual connection between humankind and nature. READ MORE
Confronting history, race, and personal tragedy
The Chameleon Couch by Yusef Komunyakaa
Appeared in the Dallas Morning News | April 3, 2011
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Hedonism, a philosophy dating to ancient Greece, maintains that life’s purpose is to pursue pleasure and avoid unpleasantness. The Hedonist who appears in The Chameleon Couch, Yusef Komunyakaa’s 14th volume of poetry, has the ravenousness of the ancient Greeks but refuses their escapism.
Rather, this hedonist partakes in beauty and abundance as well as scarcity and grief. He “suck[s] all the sappy nectar/from honeysuckle blossoms,” and would “die for October’s last juicy plums." But then declares: “I’d stand on an anthill to learn/the blue heron’s treatise on agony/Every joy and sorry are mine.” READ MORE
Appeared in the Dallas Morning News | April 3, 2011
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Hedonism, a philosophy dating to ancient Greece, maintains that life’s purpose is to pursue pleasure and avoid unpleasantness. The Hedonist who appears in The Chameleon Couch, Yusef Komunyakaa’s 14th volume of poetry, has the ravenousness of the ancient Greeks but refuses their escapism.
Rather, this hedonist partakes in beauty and abundance as well as scarcity and grief. He “suck[s] all the sappy nectar/from honeysuckle blossoms,” and would “die for October’s last juicy plums." But then declares: “I’d stand on an anthill to learn/the blue heron’s treatise on agony/Every joy and sorry are mine.” READ MORE
David Wojahn's Inventory of Mortality
World Tree by David Wojahn
Appeared in The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette | March 8, 2011
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Susan Sontag defines photography as "the inventory of our mortality." Like an ancient handprint on a cave wall, a photograph records an individual's momentary presence while serving as a reminder that that moment has passed.
In his ambitious ninth collection, "World Tree," David Wojahn draws on photos, cave paintings, and recordings to create his own inventory of mortality. He pays tribute to dead musicians, memorializes favorite poets and remembers friends who have died. READ MORE
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Also appeared in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune
Appeared in The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette | March 8, 2011
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Susan Sontag defines photography as "the inventory of our mortality." Like an ancient handprint on a cave wall, a photograph records an individual's momentary presence while serving as a reminder that that moment has passed.
In his ambitious ninth collection, "World Tree," David Wojahn draws on photos, cave paintings, and recordings to create his own inventory of mortality. He pays tribute to dead musicians, memorializes favorite poets and remembers friends who have died. READ MORE
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Also appeared in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune
Well-versed in Amistad Revolt
Ardency by Kevin Young
Appeared in the Dallas Morning News | February 6, 2011
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Robert Hayden begins his classic poem “Middle Passage” by listing the “bright, ironical names” of slave ships. Published in 1962, it tells the story of the 1839 slave revolt aboard the Amistad. The surviving Africans ended up in a Connecticut jail while waiting for the American courts to grant them freedom.
Hayden said he wanted to write poems “like algebra, in which you were solving for X,” meaning they should be a search — for the writer and the reader — for the unknown. READ MORE
READ MY INTERVIEW WITH YOUNG IN THE PARIS REVIEW
Appeared in the Dallas Morning News | February 6, 2011
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Robert Hayden begins his classic poem “Middle Passage” by listing the “bright, ironical names” of slave ships. Published in 1962, it tells the story of the 1839 slave revolt aboard the Amistad. The surviving Africans ended up in a Connecticut jail while waiting for the American courts to grant them freedom.
Hayden said he wanted to write poems “like algebra, in which you were solving for X,” meaning they should be a search — for the writer and the reader — for the unknown. READ MORE
READ MY INTERVIEW WITH YOUNG IN THE PARIS REVIEW
Hayes' New Poetry Challenges, Honors American History
Lighthead by Terrance Hayes
Appeared in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette | May 23, 2010
Terrance Hayes' fourth collection of poetry is a celebration and castigation of American culture, one worthy of the term "Americanist." The title references the light of inspiration and the fire that pours from the heads of two teenage lynching victims in one of the opening poems. The fact that the title can do both inspiration and elegy is indicative of how meaning is contested terrain in Hayes' work.
Mr. Hayes, a professor of English at Carnegie Mellon University, deftly quilts together different textures of language. Rants move into love poems and biting humor butts up against meditations.
READ MORE
Appeared in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette | May 23, 2010
Terrance Hayes' fourth collection of poetry is a celebration and castigation of American culture, one worthy of the term "Americanist." The title references the light of inspiration and the fire that pours from the heads of two teenage lynching victims in one of the opening poems. The fact that the title can do both inspiration and elegy is indicative of how meaning is contested terrain in Hayes' work.
Mr. Hayes, a professor of English at Carnegie Mellon University, deftly quilts together different textures of language. Rants move into love poems and biting humor butts up against meditations.
READ MORE
From Pittsburgh to a New York Jazz Loft, W. Eugene Smith Followed His Obsessions
The Jazz Loft Project: Photographs and Tapes of W. Eugene Smith From 821 Sixth Avenue 1957-1965 by Sam Stephenson
Appeared in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette | April 4, 2010
In 1956 W. Eugene Smith, a successful photojournalist for Life magazine, visited Pittsburgh to photograph the city for writer Stefan Lorant, who was working on a book intended to celebrate the town's bicentennial two years later.
What started as an assignment burgeoned into an obsession. He took nearly 17,000 photographs of the city; only a handful were exhibited in his lifetime, and the project nearly cost him his career. READ MORE
Appeared in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette | April 4, 2010
In 1956 W. Eugene Smith, a successful photojournalist for Life magazine, visited Pittsburgh to photograph the city for writer Stefan Lorant, who was working on a book intended to celebrate the town's bicentennial two years later.
What started as an assignment burgeoned into an obsession. He took nearly 17,000 photographs of the city; only a handful were exhibited in his lifetime, and the project nearly cost him his career. READ MORE
Robert Frost has Novelist's Sympathy in this New Story about His Life
Fall of Frost by Brian Hall
Appeared in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette | April 13, 2008
Though his poems are familiar to the lay reader, [Frost's] biography is not. This is perhaps by his design. He was reticent about personal affairs and discouraged critics from reading his life into his poems. He had a strained relationship with Lawrance Thompson, his official biographer, but Frost kept him on out of loyalty.Thompson's biography, perhaps inaccurately, presents the poet as irascible and arrogant.
Novelist Brian Hall gives a more sympathetic portrait. In his work, the poet is depressed, angry, perhaps even a little crazy, but still undeniably brilliant.
READ MORE
Appeared in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette | April 13, 2008
Though his poems are familiar to the lay reader, [Frost's] biography is not. This is perhaps by his design. He was reticent about personal affairs and discouraged critics from reading his life into his poems. He had a strained relationship with Lawrance Thompson, his official biographer, but Frost kept him on out of loyalty.Thompson's biography, perhaps inaccurately, presents the poet as irascible and arrogant.
Novelist Brian Hall gives a more sympathetic portrait. In his work, the poet is depressed, angry, perhaps even a little crazy, but still undeniably brilliant.
READ MORE
Continuing Revelations from a Virtuosic Poet
Spectral Waves: New and Uncollected Poems by Madeline DeFrees
Appeared in the Los Angeles Times | July 25, 2006
Although her reputation has grown steadily over the years, poet Madeline DeFrees' career has been a quiet one, often overlooked because she steadfastly refuses to lock step with literary trends. She studied under Karl Shapiro and John Berryman but refused to write the confessional-style poetry they advocated. She seeks to remain anonymous in her writing, although over the years her work has begun to welcome an identifiable speaker. "Spectral Waves," DeFrees' newest collection of pitch-perfect poems, comes as she is nearing 90, and this dense, idiosyncratic volume rewards careful reading.
DeFrees' poetry is often pigeonholed as "religious" because she was a nun for 38 years. It is but not in the sense that it is overtly Christian. READ MORE
Appeared in the Los Angeles Times | July 25, 2006
Although her reputation has grown steadily over the years, poet Madeline DeFrees' career has been a quiet one, often overlooked because she steadfastly refuses to lock step with literary trends. She studied under Karl Shapiro and John Berryman but refused to write the confessional-style poetry they advocated. She seeks to remain anonymous in her writing, although over the years her work has begun to welcome an identifiable speaker. "Spectral Waves," DeFrees' newest collection of pitch-perfect poems, comes as she is nearing 90, and this dense, idiosyncratic volume rewards careful reading.
DeFrees' poetry is often pigeonholed as "religious" because she was a nun for 38 years. It is but not in the sense that it is overtly Christian. READ MORE
Long Before the Hilton Era, When Astors Roamed the Earth
When the Astors Owned New York by Justin Kaplan
Appeared in The New York Observer | June 12, 2006
“Like New York itself, the Waldorf-Astoria crystallized the improbable and fabulous,” wrote historian Lloyd Morris. “It was more than a mere hotel. It was a vast, glittering, iridescent fantasy that had been conjured up to infect millions of plain Americans with a new idea—the aspiration to lead an expensive gregarious life as publicly as possible.” Originally built as two hotels by warring cousins in the 1890’s, the Waldorf-Astoria was a New York institution. Its lobby displayed the behavior of the rich and famous for the wonderment—and ridicule—of the public.
Justin Kaplan ably conjures up the world of the “Waldorf Gang” in his slim, readable When the Astors Owned New York. READ MORE
Appeared in The New York Observer | June 12, 2006
“Like New York itself, the Waldorf-Astoria crystallized the improbable and fabulous,” wrote historian Lloyd Morris. “It was more than a mere hotel. It was a vast, glittering, iridescent fantasy that had been conjured up to infect millions of plain Americans with a new idea—the aspiration to lead an expensive gregarious life as publicly as possible.” Originally built as two hotels by warring cousins in the 1890’s, the Waldorf-Astoria was a New York institution. Its lobby displayed the behavior of the rich and famous for the wonderment—and ridicule—of the public.
Justin Kaplan ably conjures up the world of the “Waldorf Gang” in his slim, readable When the Astors Owned New York. READ MORE
Winter of Discontent
Averno: Poems by Louise Gluck
Appeared in the Los Angeles Times | March 19, 2006
When Hades kidnaps Persephone, the daughter of the goddess of agriculture, Demeter, the world plunges into winter until Zeus intervenes, demanding that Hades return the girl. But Hades has fed Persephone the fruit of the underworld and she must come back to him for several months each year.
Gluck, whose numerous books of poetry include the Pulitzer Prize-winning "The Wild Iris," writes with an aching precision in these spare and elegant pieces. Her gloss of the Persephone myth in 17 interlocking poems is in the same vein as Swinburne -- bleak, full of death, loss and the impossibility of finding comfort in art, nature or companionship. For Gluck, this myth is a cautionary tale about human attachment, showing us that there is no safety anywhere. READ MORE
Appeared in the Los Angeles Times | March 19, 2006
When Hades kidnaps Persephone, the daughter of the goddess of agriculture, Demeter, the world plunges into winter until Zeus intervenes, demanding that Hades return the girl. But Hades has fed Persephone the fruit of the underworld and she must come back to him for several months each year.
Gluck, whose numerous books of poetry include the Pulitzer Prize-winning "The Wild Iris," writes with an aching precision in these spare and elegant pieces. Her gloss of the Persephone myth in 17 interlocking poems is in the same vein as Swinburne -- bleak, full of death, loss and the impossibility of finding comfort in art, nature or companionship. For Gluck, this myth is a cautionary tale about human attachment, showing us that there is no safety anywhere. READ MORE
Rich Rewards of Life Well-Observed
Refusing Heaven: Poems by Jack Gilbert
Appeared in the Los Angeles Times | March 8, 2005
A thousand years ago when they built the gardens
of Kyoto, the stones were set in the streams askew.
Whoever went quickly would fall in.
Thus Jack Gilbert writes in his magnificent fourth collection, "Refusing Heaven." In these elegant poems, he shows the value of patience. The reader must slow to negotiate the dense philosophical and moral issues these poems present: the nature of loss, the utility of solitude, the reconciliation of faith and suffering.
Like the gardens, this careful treading is rewarded with stunning vistas and masterfully crafted works of heartbreaking beauty. READ MORE
Appeared in the Los Angeles Times | March 8, 2005
A thousand years ago when they built the gardens
of Kyoto, the stones were set in the streams askew.
Whoever went quickly would fall in.
Thus Jack Gilbert writes in his magnificent fourth collection, "Refusing Heaven." In these elegant poems, he shows the value of patience. The reader must slow to negotiate the dense philosophical and moral issues these poems present: the nature of loss, the utility of solitude, the reconciliation of faith and suffering.
Like the gardens, this careful treading is rewarded with stunning vistas and masterfully crafted works of heartbreaking beauty. READ MORE
