--Lynda Koolish, The Women's Review of Books
--Mary Lynn Broe, Prairie Schooner
|
|
Cool, cerebral, studied. Passionate, visceral, immediate....Alicia
Ostriker is not only writing both kinds of poems, but many of the poems
in this collection are cold and fiery at the same time; they burn with
the intensity of dry ice.
--Lynda Koolish, The Women's Review of Books |
| Ostriker reinvents the Eros/Psyche myth, a host of family
spirits and struggles, the political understatement of news events from
National Public Radio.
--Mary Lynn Broe, Prairie Schooner |
| Ostriker's fifth volume of verse shows her to be among the finest American
poets....She knows how to create out of plain English speech lines whose
rhythm and imagery glow from within.
--D.S. Earnshaw, World Literature Today
|
| Willingly and warmly, Ostriker mixes it up with the human race--in
"The Blood," for instance, a fine elegy for her old-fangled Jewish father,
and in "Ceremony of the Bathtub," a portrait of husband and small son aslosh
in soapsuds, comparing penises (as Dr. Spock says fathers and sons aren't
wise to do.) Such poems stick with us, like friendly burrs....Acerbic wit,
verve and energy insure that no page of Ostriker's collection is a bore.
--X.J. Kennedy, Poetry
|
| Uniformly excellent....Not just a collection but an integral book,
its four sections chart an emotional trip begining in bewilderment, moving
through scorn and bitterness, to consideration of art as healing.
--Dabney Stuart, USA Today |
Table
of Contents
****
To order:
Princeton University
Press
****
Poetry Selections:
The
Exchange
A
Minor Van Gogh (He Speaks)