David Stephenson’s poems, like the machines he often writes about, are
meticulously made and orderly, the work of a poet driven by a need to impose
order on and to find sanity in his disheveled world. That he succeeds as often
as he does in making poetry out of ordinary things is a tribute not only to the
acuity of his observation but also to the artist’s imagination that transfigures
what he sees into surprising poetic perceptions.
— Robert Daseler
There is wisdom in this collection, a plain-spoken, convincing style, and a sense
of irony about what it means to live in a world that contains evangelists on
motorcycles and workers in a Twinkie plant. A man of both science and poetry,
Stephenson shows us, in so many ways, how we live – all the time with impressive
technical skill.
From ancient times to the present, poets have used the power
of rhyme to enhance their poetry, and all the great poets
in the English tradition — from Chaucer to Wilbur —
have written in rhyme. Unfortunately, in the twentieth century,
rhyme was generally dismissed by most of the vers libre
writers, but the tradition was kept vigorously alive by our
best poets: Yeats, Frost, Auden, Millay, Larkin, Nemerov,
Wilbur, and many others. At the present time, as a result
of the formalist revival of the past two decades, rhyme is
reasserting its rightful place at the center of the English
literary tradition. Rhyming Poems: A Contemporary Anthology
is a unique collection of 100 contemporary poems that showcase
the marvelous variety, power, and pleasure of rhyme.
2006 Winner, Richard Wakefield's East of Early Winters
For too many years, those of us who enjoy Richard
Wakefield's splendidly-wrought poems have awaited this very
book. Poem after poem is moving, beautiful, and even wise.
In bringing remote country life memorably into poetry, Wakefield
must be the Robert Frost of the Pacific Northwest. With East
of Early Winters, Richard Wakefield takes his rightful place
in the forefront of American poetry.
— X. J. Kennedy
In poem after poem, Wakefield draws the reader out to the
fields and roads, into the barns and abandoned farmhouses,
and into the midst of the barely-making-it country lives he
clearly knows in his bones. The passing of a way of life he
seems ambivalent about is conveyed with unobtrusive, compelling
grace. These are generous poems to be grateful for, to revisit
often for the pleasures they offer the senses and the intellect,
and to admire for their insistence on communicating.
Although it often seems that liberals and the radical Left
have assumed complete hegemony over the arts, especially the
literary arts, there exists a remnant of very talented American
poets who create beautiful, serious, witty, moving, and diverse
poetry from a conservative point of view. This unique anthology
illustrates the wide range of these determined and sometimes
defiant artists, who hope that their work will encourage more
like-minded Americans to learn the poetic craft and pursue
the literary endeavor.
Chelsea Rathburn’s well-crafted poems honor the beauty
and order of the world by accommodating its quirks and oddities.
Time and again, her straightforward colloquial grace leads
to unexpected yet convincing revelations about her subjects.
By acknowledging the fragility of the lives and relationships
she explores, she gives them sustaining significance. With
its wealth of happy paradoxes, this collection marks the debut
of an impressively talented poet.
-- Tim Steele
The line in Chelsea Rathburn's exceptionally fine and promising
The Shifting Line is not only the line of love, traced
unflinchingly through its lucid confusions and murky clarities,
but also the deeply human pulse of feeling and forms -- both
metrical and amatory -- composed from the dissonance of a
fully lived life. A remarkable debut.
The irresistable, dazzling sonnet is now in the midst of
a tremendous literary revival. This unique anthology contains
150 contemporary sonnets written by a wide range of talented
authors, including some of our most distinguished living poets.
"Nicol is much more than a poet's poet; he is also a
reader's poet, and his work, though dazzling, is not intended
to simply dazzle but to convey, with charm and profundity,
the experiences of our common life."
- Rhina P. Espaillat
"How different an aesthetic Nicol shows in the splendid
Winter Light, as canny and moving a formalist collection
as I have seen in years."
-Sydney Lea
"On every page Nicol exhibits a genuine largeness of
spirit and grace of mind. His techniques are well-honed. This
is certainly among the finest new volumes of poetry I have
read in years."
"In Distant Blue, Thomas Carper confirms his
mastery of the sonnet, and proves brilliantly able to meet
other challenges besides. His translations of classic poems
from French are some of the best we have, and his version
of Anna Akhmatova's "Requiem" is immense. Carper
is at home not only in the worlds of Rembrandt, Couperin,
and Greek mythology, but also in a contemporary flea market
and at a laser checkout counter. His is a strong, sure voice,
rewarding to listen to."
- X. J. Kennedy
"Thomas Carper’s imaginative sympathies range
from Maine to Sri Lanka, from the court of Louis Quatorze
to the courtyard of the Lubianka Prison. That such immensity
of vision can find its perfect expression in the intimate
space of a sonnet is a miracle practiced again and again between
the covers of this book."
2002 Winner, A.M. Juster's
The Secret Language of Women
"A.M. Juster, one of my all-time favorite satirists,
is a master of the sonnet and of every other form to which
he turns his hand. For a long time, Juster's admirers have
been owed an ample collection of his work, and at last that
debt is paid. Read it; revel in it; be enlightened, moved
and regaled."
-X.J. Kennedy
"For some years now, I have read and admired
A.M. Juster's poems in magazines, recognizing him as one of
the contemporary masters of the sonnet and short poem. But
The Secret Language of Women reveals him as a poet
and translator of wider accomplishment than I had been aware
of. His versions of Petrarch are stunning, and the title poem
of this collection, which speculates on the origins of "nushu"
(a type of Chinese script originated by women and known only
by them), strikes me as one of the finest long narratives
of recent years. A poet of great clarity and intellectual
courage, A.M. Juster may now reach the wider audience he so
richly deserves."
"Rhina Espaillat does the hardest thing of all for a
poet -- she talks about large subjects in a quiet voice and
wholly commands the reader's attention and assent. Her work's
strength lies in its limpid clarity, in the delicacy and precision
of its language, and not the least in its humane wisdom. The
poems are gorgeously crafted, with the kind of unobtrusive
skill that leaves the reader humble and grateful; they speak
to us in the steady, trustworthy tones of an old friend whose
comfort and understanding we know are real and won't fail.
Rehearsing Absence is a wonderful book."
- Dick Davis
"Rooted in dailiness, sculpted with a particularly
canny sense of the line, Rhina Espaillat's poems, especially
her wonderful sonnets, keep their feet on the ground while
their spirited thoughts range all over creation. A burnished
collection."
- Rachel Hadas
2000 Winner, Len Krisak's
Even As We Speak
"If there are still people who assume that metrical
verse can't deal with present-day matter, let them read this
lively book and stand corrected ... Here is a Richard Wilbur
prizewinner worthy of the name, by a poet with a name to remember."
- X.J. Kennedy
"Len Krisak demonstrates in Even As We
Speak that great tradition is indeed still speaking to us
in the twenty-first century. A well-made poem, he reminds
us, is an emblem of courage."
- Mary Jo Salter
"These are poems that invite the reader
again and again, through every avenue available to poetry,
into a mind worth visiting and revisiting."
- Rhina P. Espaillat
"Even as We Speak is a widely,
even wildly diverse book, but it is held together by craft
and by a vision that, while sometimes darker than others,
looks deeply. Len Krisak demonstrates that accessibility need
not equate with superficiality."
"A.E. Stallings's Archaic Smile marks a debut
of genuine distinction. At a time when so much new poetry
seems somber and lackluster, Stallings displays extraordinary
powers of invention and delight."
- Dana Gioia
"Archaic Smile is a collection in
which splendid formal technique merges with voices lifting
out of the mist. In love with Greece, A.E. Stallings is in
love with the world. Raves are in order: this brilliant debut
immediately puts Stallings very much in the front rank of
young American poets."
- Dick Allen
"Witty, surprising, sturdy, Archaic
Smile is a collection of fresh pleasures."
- Fred Chappell
1998 Winner, Robert Daseler's
LeveringAvenue
"Levering Avenue by Robert Daseler is a unique
and powerful collection of contemporary sonnets dealing with
the tragedy of human loss. Like Thomas Hardy's poems about
the death of his wife, Levering Avenue renders an unforgettable,
moving, and ultimately heroic confrontation with the inevitable
human devastations of loss and loneliness.
"In Levering Avenue, the convincing interior
world of the speaker, who's been devastated by personal loss,
contains a vast range of place, event, and memory, and yet
everything remains accessible to the reader and powerfully
moving."
