PositiveLibrary JournalNot as strikingly original in concept and language as feeld, this new collection adheres to a more personal, intimate aesthetic (\'Our separate smoke/ caught/ in the same ascent\') that may or may not connect with any given reader...Still, Charles remains a serious experimental poet who has tasked herself with the challenge of creating \'a language capable of itself.\'
Mary Jo Salter
PositiveLibrary JournalIt would be challenging to find a poetry collection encompassing a wider range of subjects than Salter’s latest ... Salter enfolds the varied objects of her attention within the lapidary midcentury formalism of polished rhymes and traditional prosody ... But Salter’s wit often lightens the mood ... Salter’s \'fine high language of address and dress\' may not appeal to everyone, but those who lament the current dearth of old-school verse will find much to admire here.
Frank Bidart
PositiveLibrary JournalDylan Thomas famously wrote \'Old age should burn and rave at close of day,\' advice expertly followed by Bidart, now 82, in this new...smoldering collection of forthright lyric poems ... Though sometimes uncomfortable to read, Bidart’s unleavened expressions of disillusionment, despair, and futility in the face of age...are acts of resistance against the inevitability of death. Their blunt force may escape younger poetry lovers but will resonate poignantly with older generations of readers.
Yusef Komunyakaa
RaveLibrary JournalA generous selection ... The poet exercises his distinctive ability to unite past with present, the personal with the universal ... Komunyakaa’s economical mode of expression nevertheless gives full play to the weight, depth, and musicality of his subjects ... For those unfamiliar with Komunyakaa, this volume offers a rich sampling of his postmillennial work. For his fans, it further enforces his reputation as an important and necessary American poet.
Margaret Atwood
RaveLibrary JournalElegiac yet cautionary ... These carefully tuned lyric poems, many lightly rhymed, often bear bitter witness to humankind’s self-destructive treatment of both planet and spirit ... Atwood’s flare for precise metaphor in no way softens her delivery ... Combining the wit of Dorothy Parker with the wisdom of Emily Dickinson, Atwood adds a steely grace and richness all her own. If there is beauty in despair, one may find it here.
Vijay Seshadri
PositiveLibrary JournalIn an engaging, confiding tone that embraces both wit and compassion, Seshadri enlists poetry, what he calls \'spooky action at a distance,\' to assure us that despite the historical moment\'s forced isolation and heightened sociopolitical stress, we need not feel we\'re alone.
Karen Solie
MixedLibrary JournalDrawing deeply from a broad array of historical accounts, philosophical works, and religious texts, Solie shapes an abstract geography of mind and spirit to the contours of physical space, where the smallest feature might assume metaphysical significance ... While this moodily erudite exploration of solitude exudes a timeless aura, most individual poems rarely transcend a claustrophobic flatness of expression, diluting \'the nervous power of life\' that potentially resides within their subjects.
Adrienne Rich
RaveLibrary Journal...the size of this anthology is surprising for not only its quantity but also for the unflagging quality of its craft and vision ... though her poems often begin with granular, personal observations...they unfold into complex maps of wider awareness and realization ... An \'accurate dreamer\' who voiced \'her own inward scream,\' Rich is an indispensable poet, whose work parallels and brings into focus the transformative zeitgeist of her era. This magisterial compendium forcefully suggests that era has not yet passed.
Kevin Young
RaveLibrary Journal\"This new collection continues and deepens the poet’s lyrical exploration of the African American cultural influences who shaped his—and the nation’s—identity. Through short, spare lines that dance, chime, laugh, lament, and assert, Young creates a consciousness-in-motion, a weaving of personal and national histories that not only reanimates the past but moves forcefully into the present.\
