Product Description
Winner of the 1999 May Swenson Poetry Award, PatriciaFargnoli has also received the Robert Frost Literary Award, afellowship at the MacDowell Colony, has been in residences many timesat the Dorset Writers Colony, and has received several other awardsfor her poetry. Her work has been published in Poetry, PoetryNorthwest, Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner , and many other literaryjournals. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

great poetry for people who don't like poetry
Amazing book of poetry.Thought provoking,gentle,kind.If you are tired of in-your-face fiction, read Patricia Fargnoli's work and you will come away from the reading with more than any self-help book could offer.A true treasure.

poems that will home!
A book that most readers can identify with!

Well written , easy to read, fun, contemporary topics.
I loved this book.It is wellwritten, easy to read, and fun.The poems have a musical lilt, almost like jazz.The topics are of everyday lifethings that happen to all of us all the time.Good work.

Poetry to save your life . . .
This collection of poetry does what truly great poetry should do -- it touches so truly and so deeply upon the human condition -- the joy and the suffering of it -- that the personal voice of the poet becomes, as GalwayKinnell once wrote, just another voice of a creature on the planetspeaking. Whether speaking of difficult or joyous times, the loss of loveor its fond remembrance, the naming of a child, aging, or death, the poet'swords enliven, enrich and expand the reader's own experience, outwittingdespair, careening toward joy, encountering pain with courage, and thenletting that pain go to the "dirt-borers," whose job it is toturn the dead back into the living again.This is poetry that can saveyour life on those dark winter nights when the only voice you can hear isthe one of your own despair.If I had to choose one or two voices to havewith me on such nights, voices to sail the psyche's frail ship to morning'sshore, Ms. Fargnoli's would be chief among them. ... Read more

Product Description
Williams is a poet of unique vision who always seems tobe "looking at," with special attention to the experience of thesenses.It is perhaps this quality of attention that informs herinterest in the formulations of poetry itself, in its constructeddimension. Her control of the line, of rhythmic possibilities, ofstructures both formal and free, is evident in every poem. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (7)

A distinctive voice in poetry
I don't know of any poet of the younger generation whose aims and voice are as distinctive as Lisa Williams'.A lot of poetry these days consists of naïve (or else ironic or heavily stylized and encrypted) self-expression, but Williams' best poems are often more like acts of the imagination in the seriously playful mode that Stevens perfected--they are poems "of the mind in the act of finding What will suffice," to use his phrase.Like Moore and Bishop, Williams pays intensely vivid and particularized homage to the things of the world in a voice that can be bracingly informal even when pushing the boundaries of currently accepted dictions and styles or when challenging the reader intellectually.At once enigmatic and evocative, speculative and lyrical, visionary and grounded, Williams' best poems manage to sound both carefully made and improvisatory.In an odd way they can sometimes seem akin to both formalist and "spoken word" currents in poetry today.

I'm glad to see on Amazon.com that Williams has a new book coming out in the spring. Among the ten or twelve new poems I've seen in magazines over the last few years have been several amazing meditations or imaginative riffs on subjects like sea creatures or the sun or cosmological phenomena, one or two very musical themes-and-variations (in the mode of Stevens' "Idea of Order at Key West," perhaps) and a handful of autobiographical poems--though even in those Williams never descends into the triviality or exhibitionism of confessional poetry.

Read for yourself - a remarkable debut
My only complaint is that Ms. Williams has not put out another book of poetry since this fine collection, the winner of the May Swenson Award for a first-timer.Other readers seem to view her work as trite over-workshopped craftsmanship; it is precisely the qualities that they deride that make Ms. Williams' work stand out from the rest attempting to practice their craft today.Rather than becoming self-absorbed with the thought of oneself as a "poet" while sinking headfirst into a miasma of hackneyed cliches, Ms. Williams explores the world of culture and ideas while at the same time offering exceptional style and imagery.I was a contemporary of Ms. Williams' at UVA, though as a literary critic and not as a writer -- and have heard her read several times.She is, without a doubt, one of the most impressive readers of poetry I have heard, perhaps only eclipsed by W.D. Snodgrass and Derek Walcott.Judge for yourself -- if you are a student or lover of poetry, it is definitely worth you time to read this collection, and it should be available at almost any major university library.

All the Schooling in the World, but no Divine Inspiration
Lisa Williams studied under the instruction of Rita Dove and with other now well-known poets. But this book lacks the spark that is necessary to make a book fly. All of the poems are flat and too self-indulged that it makes them difficult to get throught at times. Sure she writes in trimeter and tetrameter and that takes skill, but past skill a writer needs something unique to set him/her apart from the vast field of other writers. The fact is that Williams hasn't found herself. Like a classically trained painter who cannot break free from what has so been instilled in him/her through years of instruction, Williams The Hammered Dulcimer lacks staying power. The poems remain monotonous and difficult to relate to. The language is not as fresh as it could be and the reader can definitely see that this book was, in fact, "hammered out" and didn't come naturally to the poet. This woman is smart, but not genius and there is no genius in her poetry. She is good at her craft, but anyone with a MFA from UVA will probably have his/her craft down fairly well. But she doesn't have the madness it takes to be truly inspirational, not to mention that her poems use traditional meter and employ traditional turns, if they employ any kind of turn at all. In short, there is little meaning and beauty in her poetry. She may not like the "jewelled" lines of late Victorian prosody, yet she had proved that even a hundred years later lyrical cliches still haunt the contemporary poet.

An Extraordinary Marriage of Sound and Sense
*The Hammered Dulcimer* is proof that contemporary poets need not curb their desires to revel in the realm of ideas.In these poems the abstract becomes delightfully concrete--as, for example, when she shows the reader"the arrows of our fortune" pointing down "taut as a heron'sfoot" (in "The Direction of Shadow").Lisa Williams' pitch,diction, and tone consistently soar to keep perfect pace with the ideas sheexplores.Meanwhile, her formal deftness--whether employing asubtleiambic line or ballad stanzas reminiscent of Scottish mystic HelenAdam--lends to each poem a music that isdelightful to the ear.This is acollections I will turn to again and again--and I impatiently awaitWilliams' next book.

Skilled but ho-hum workshop sounding poems
Williams writes a "nice" line, her poems are tight and controlled - perhaps overly controlled.Unfortunately, I didn't find much here other than craftmanship.Her poems suffer from an all too commonproblem (these workshop days) of turning small speculations intouniversals, but lacking in detail, meat, heart, and experience.Williamsmay turn into a fine poet but if she doesn't get beyond the surface herwork will remain glossy workshop ditties. ... Read more

Product Description
Winner of the 2004 Swenson Poetry Award with an introduction by J. D. McClatchy. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A sense of peace and hope
Frannie Lindsay holds an MFA from the Iowa Writer's Workshop, is a classical pianist, writes wonderful poetry, and resides with her three retired greyhounds. This book was the winner of the 2004 Swenson Poetry Award and none other than the renowned poet J.D. McClatchy, in praising her work stated, "In her craft in the truth." I first read this book, twice, late in the evening and was struck by the sense of calm and tranquility it brought after a somewhat hectic day. This even though the subject matter frequently deals with loss and pain and its attendant bewilderment, denial, and sorrow. Lindsay has the rare ability to convey her obviously genuine, heartfelt, truthful feelings about some of life's most sensitive subjects and make the reader feel, in the end, a sense of peace and hope. This is the type of book that stays on the bedside table.
... Read more

Amazon.com Review
If the first three decades of the 20th century mark the real birth ofAmerican poetry, then the following three might be considered a long andsometimes contentious adolescence. Not that there's anything juvenile aboutthe work of Hart Crane, Elizabeth Bishop, Langston Hughes, or TheodoreRoethke--quite the opposite. But after the fireworks of early modernism,there's a sense of American poetry finally coming into its own,multifarious identity. And the editors of American Poetry: The TwentiethCentury, Volume Two: E.E. Cummings to May Swenson--i.e., the same Gangof Five that compiled the stellar first volume--have done veryhandsomely by the era.

Again there are generous servings of the indisputable giants, from Hughesto Roethke to the underrated Louise Bogan. Perhaps the editors have beentoo generous with Cummings's lowercase frolics, but there is ahistorical argument to be made in his favor: who else gave modernism such ahuman (not to say antic) face? Hart Crane certainly gets his due, withnearly 40 pages devoted to the linguistic spans of "The Bridge," andElizabeth Bishop's section alone is worth the price of admission--indeed,I'd push cash on the barrelhead simply to read the exquisite conclusion to"Over 2000 Illustrations and a Complete Concordance":

…Why couldn't we have seen
this old Nativity while we were at it?
--the dark ajar, the rocks breaking with light,
an undisturbed, unbreathing flame,
colorless, sparkless, freely fed on straw,
and, lulled within, a family with pets,
--and looked and looked our infant sight away.

Customer Reviews (9)

Big, But Not Big Enough
I think the two volumes published thus far are only half of what's expected, but I'm not sure, as these were put into print five years ago, as far as I can tell. There is plenty to enjoy here, and some to rightfully forget. There's also plenty missing. (Attempts at political correctness can be so tedious and obvious.) For instance, on the enjoyment side, Marianne Moore's The Steeple-Jack is a wonder of construction, as is Robert Frost's obsessively worked out "Familiar with the Night." But such anthologies as this are always questioned as to the method of selection, the poets disregarded, and the poems picked. Why, for instance, was Marianne Moore's Octopus overlooked? Where are W. H. Auden, Robert Lowell, Adrienne Rich, Sylvia Plath, Ted Hughes, Allen Ginsburg, and James Merrill, among so many others? Are they still to come? I hope so. And I just don't care for Gertrude Stein. Her work is unreadable and does nothing at all for me. I don't know why so much space is always allotted to her in so many anthologies. Yes, I get the point. No, I don't need 37 pages of this point. It seems her importance only lies in who she knew and how she lived, not in any actual talent she had.

If the Library of America is coming out with any more volumes to round out the twentieth century, they are taking their sweet time about it. I really can't wait that long. In the meantime, a new American anthology is due out from Oxford in 2006, edited by David Lehman. I've had a sneak peek, and it's inclusive and won't disappoint.

"My hand in yours, Walt Whitman --so--"
This volume is the second of a projected four volume anthology of Twentieth Century American Poetry in the Library of America series.American poetry richly deserves this extensive treatment, and this series may serve to introduce America's poets to a growing number of readers.

This volume begins with E.E.Cummings (born 1894) and concludes with May Swenson (born 1913) The volume has almost an embarrassment of riches.By my count there are 122 separate poets included.The book includes a brief biography of each writer included which is invaluable for reading the book.

As with any anthology of this nature,the selection is a compromise between inclusiveness and quality.Readers may quarrel with the relative weight given to various poets in terms of number of pages, and with the inclusion or exclusion of writers. (I was disappointed that a poet I admire, Horace Gregory, gets only two pages, for example).Overall, it is a wonderful volume and includes some greatpoetry.

There are favorites and familiar names here and names that will be familiar to few.A joy of a book such as this is to see favorites and to learn about poets one hasn't read before.

A major feature of this volume is its emphasis on diversity -- much more so than in volume 1 or in the Library of America's 19th century poetry anthologies.There are many Jewish poets (including Reznikoff, a favorite ofmine, Zukofsky, Alter Brody, Rose Drachler, George Oppen, Karl Shapiro, and others) and even more African-American Poets (Lanston Hughes, Countee Cullen, Richard Wright, Waring Cuney, Sterling Brown, Arna Bontemps, Robert Hayden and many more.)There are also selections from blues and popular songs which to me is overdone.

Of the poets unknown to me, I enjoyed particularly Lorine Niedecker, Laura Riding, and Janet Lewis-- women are well represented in this volume.

I have taken the title of this review from the Cape Hatteras section of "The Bridge" by Hart Crane.(page 229)Crane has more pages devoted to him than any other writer in the volume and deservedly so."The Bridge" and "Voyages" are presented complete together with some of the shorter poems.This tragic, tormented and gifted writer tried in The Bridge to present a vision of America mystical in character, celebratory of the merican experience, and inclusive in its diversity.The poem is a worthy successor to the poetry of Whitman who is celebrated in it.The title of the review,I think, captures both Crane's poem as well as the goal of the volume as a whole in capturing something of the diversity of experience reflected in 20th Century American Verse.

"What thou lovest well is thy true heritage"
Although not widely read and appreciated, American poetry underwent a renaissance in the Twentieth Century. At some point, readers will look back at our Twentieth Century poetry as a benchmark of literature and a guide to the thoughts, feelings, and events of our difficult century.

In this, the first of four projected volumes covering the Twentieth Century, the Library of America gives access to a treausre of reading, moving, elevating, and disturbing.The book consists of readings from 85 (by my count) poets.The poets, are arranged chronologically by the poet's birthday.The earliest writer in the volume is Henry Adams (born 1838) and the concluding writer is Dorothy Parker (born 1893).Some writers that flourished later in life, such as Wallace Stevens, thus appear in the volume before works of their peers, such as Pound and Elliot, who became famous earlier.

For me, the major poets in the volume are (not surprising choices here), Robert Frost, Wallace Stevens, W.C. Williams, Ezra Pound, T.S. Elliot, Marianne Moore.They are represented by generous selections,including Elliot's Waste Land, Steven's Notes Towards a Supreme Fiction, and several Pound Canto's given in their entirety.

It is the mark of a great literary period that there are many writers almost equally meriting attention together with the great names. There are many outstanding writers here, some known, some unknown.To name only a few, I would includeE.A Robinson, James Weldon Johnson, Adelaide Crapsey, Vachel Lindsay, Sara Teasdale, H.D. Robinson Jeffers, John Crowe Ransom, Conrad Aiken, Samuel Greenberg.It would be easy to go on.

There are different ways to read an anthology such as this.One way is to browse reading poems as they catch the reader's eye.Another way is to read favorite poems the reader already knows.

I would suggest making the effort to read the volume through from cover to cover.Before beginning the paricular poet, I would suggest reading the biographical summary at the end of the volume.These are short but excellent and illuminate the authors and the poetry.The notes are sparse, but foreign terms in Pound and Elliot's poetry are translated, and we have selections from Elliot's and Marianne Moore's own notes.

By reading the volume through,one gets a sense of continuity and context.Then, the reader can devote attention to individual poems.Some twentieth century works, such as those by Pound, Elliott,Moore Stevens are notoriously difficult.Read the works through,if you are coming to them for the first time, and return to them later.

I was familiar with many of the poems in the book before reading the anthology but much was new to me.I learned a great deal.My favorite poet remains Wallace Stevens, partly because he comibined the life of a man of affairs, as an attorney and insurance executive, with deep art.This remains an ideal for me. It is true as well for W.C. Williams, although I am less fond of his poetry.

The title to this review is taken from "Libretto" by Ezra Pound,
(page 371).It is the best single sentence summation I can think of for the contents of this volume.

Is everybody happy?
The real job of the anthologist is not, of course, to assemble anthologies but to anger and annoy readers. Only census takers have more doors slammed in their innocent faces. That said, a few words in defense of thisexcellent volume. Yes, there's plenty of second-tier or third-tier versehere, and those in search of pure poetry (no rocks, no soda, shaken notstirred) should probably save their pennies and buy the LOA volumes devotedto Frost, Stevens, etc etc. But a book like this one does give a splendidsense of cultural context. Sometimes the giants loom only larger whenthey're stuck in a line-up with their diminutive peers. And some of thoselesser lights are actually quite talented, too. So unless you're trulyfixated on iambic quality control, you should find much to love, and evenmore to like, in the capacious and paper-thin pages of APTTCV1.

Great Familiar Faces, But You May Find New ONes To Love!
Charles Erskine Scott Wood's "The Poet in theDesert"---"I have come to the lean and stricken land//Whichfears not God, that I may meet my soul..." Wow, now there's a place to start a survey of a century's poetry (or almost, since Volume 2 doesn't go all the way through to 1999 in poetic samplings.)Only this isn't a desert. It's a feast. : )

A new poet for me was Frances Desmond (excerpts from "Chippewa Music") and I wish there were more than 2 pages of her brief, subtle, lovely poems that made me think of Japanese haiku. A poet worth seeking out for lovely moments of reading like "it will resound finely//the sky//when I come making a noise".

Who is generously represented? Frost, WAllace Stevens, W.C. Williams, Pound, H.D, Marianne Moore, Millay. T.S.Eliot!-- 14 poems and 50+ pages for his works.

There were other new names for me (I guess I"m not as widely read poetically as I would like. As someone who appreciates spirituality in poetry, finding Anna H. Branch was a treat--"Ye stolid, homely, visible things//Above you all brood glorious wings" and "It took me ten days//To read the Bible through--//Then I saw what I saw,//And I knew what I knew."

The unfortunately named Adelaide Crapsey nevertheless has poems of sober beauty and lyrical melancholy---"Keep thou//Thy tearless watch//All night but when the blue dawn//Breathes on the silver moon, then weep!//Then weep!" Glad to meet her at last.

For those who enjoy odd little pleasures, there are forty pages of poetry by that singular personage: Gertrude Stein."I have tried earnestly to express//Just what I guess will not distress//Nor even oppress or yet caress" --or how about?-- "What do you think of watches.//Collect lobsters//And sweetbreads//and a melon,//and salad,"

I'd rather collect poetry....to read while I eat that lobster and melon.

An enjoyable and varied collection for any American reader. It was rather more fun than Volume 2, but then, when you have Ezra and Gertrude and Wallace S. and VachelL. and T.S. and H.D., you are bound to have a ripping time.

*Mir* END ... Read more

Product Description
This digital document, covering the life and work of May Swenson, is an entry from Contemporary Authors, a reference volume published by Thompson Gale. The length of the entry is 2898 words. The page length listed above is based on a typical 300-word page. Although the exact content of each entry from this volume can vary, typical entries include the following information:

• Place and date of birth and death (if deceased)
• Family members
• Education
• Professional associations and honors
• Employment
• Writings, including books and periodicals
• A description of the author's work
• References to further readings about the author

Product Description
The seventh volume in the Swenson Award series, She Took Off Her Wings and Shoes is the first to bring the avant-garde to the series. Frequently multivocal, these poems juxtapose characters, times, and places by inventively varying fonts, spacings, type size, and other formal features of the printed page. Eclectic in subject, the book explores the meanings of both mythic and personal experience. The result is an energetic poetic sense in a tradition that goes back to Apollinaire, that finds as much to work with in the conventions of type as in the passions of the human heart. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Book of Feminine Poetry Fascinates
This lovely contest winner will speak to women as surely as poets have spoken to the author, Suzette Marie Bishop.And the poets do speak to her.Much of her work is inspired by the work of others.With an eye and pen for detail, readers looking for poetry with a delicate touch are certain to love Bishop's book.
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Reviewed by Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of two award-winning books, This is the Place and Harkening ... Read more

Product Description
2000 Winner of the May Swenson Poetry Award. Foreword by MaxineKumin. Although the poems in this collection are not narrative, theydo present a narrative, gradually unspooling the tale of the poet'srebel aunt, who left the family "to marry a Chinaman" in the1930's. It's an old story, full of poignancy, mystery, family pride,and doubt. When the aunt returns to die, the poet, now grown,discovers in herself the need to reclaim the connections that herfamily had severed. She travels to China several times--tolearn. Gradually, through wide-eyed, insightful poems, we see the poetrebuild with her Chinese cousins a sense of generation, family, andhumanity--bridging over all that divides us. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Fresh Images
This collection of poems piques the reader's senses and maintains interest throughout.The narrative with compelling characterizations keeps the reader moving along and even identifying with the mysterious Chinese aunt and her family in the United States.It is one of those rare books of poetry which you want to read to the very end without putting it down, and yet to enjoy stopping and mulling over individual poems.The encounters between Buddhist, Christian, and Confucian elements lend universal significance.This is the best poetry on today's literary scene.

Hope & Caring & Sharing
This book is the winner of the May Swenson Poetry Award for 2000. While not a narrative poem, the story of the author's aunt that married a "Chinaman" and left her family only to return when she was dying, is as close as one can get. The poems tell of the author's need for connections and a sense of family and humanity that are inspiring and eternal. The bridge over all that divides us is, after all, built on hope and caring and sharing. A Marvelous collection. ... Read more

Product Description

Customer Reviews (3)

Like hearing Beethoven played on an accordion....
When a 60ish high school teacher finally produces a slim volume of poems, everyone is supportive. She gets a little award; an old critic is exhumed to write a blurb. When she reads she's always introduced as a "schoolteacher," and everyone goes "Aww."Enough affirmative action. This teacher's poems are a C minus. Am I subjective? To read her poems is to doze through platitudes: "Hills" are "distant" or, if in California, "golden," Lake Tahoe is "Blue," hotel "terraces" are "leafy." "Woods" are "snowy."People "feel the earth move," or they "remember vividly," "sigh inaudibly" and "state specifically" (in a single poem!) and "everything seems pointless." Notice that rather than find the right verb Idris Anderson routinely used a cliché adverb to push a weak verb into place.Nor has she any ear for rhythm. Try to find the meter: "All the marks he makes have a meaning like every object / in his room, his books, slippers, cushions, scissors-- / all cut finely in the plate like iron filings drawn into place by those meticulous fingers." Indefinite antecedents, and shouldn't that read, "as every object... does." How could a high school teacher misuse "like" for "as?" (She marks papers?) Anderson hopes line breaks will convert her prose into poetry, but they become an annoying stammer. It's unnatural to halt in the middle of "makes/ vivid,""hauled in/ every morning" and Anderson won't turn "unruly mess" into less of a cliché by making it "unruly/ mess." It's comic, almost, waiting for the final banality. "The same unruly," wait for it, drumroll, "mess." "When we're," wait for it, "in love...." Go to You Tube, look up Bob and Ray's famous "STOA-- Slow Talkers of America" routine. (To be fair, look at the line breaks in her only real poem, "Face," to see how they should work.)Style is C minus; so what about content? Her chosen form, ekphrasis--poems about artwork--should help Anderson. It was assigned to schoolboys too young to have anything worth writing about. They could stand on a real artist's shoulders. Idris Anderson's poems are parasitic on some other artist's painting or photo, but she only manages to convert their gold into her usual lead. She describes a Monet painting as "encrusted with paints"--Ugh! Dried blood is "encrusted," not a Monet! Then Anderson praises the "holiest of mysteries, the fully encrusted mind." Experiencing Monet through her poems is like hearing Beethoven played on an accordion. As reviewers above have noted, primarily she drags us around on her summer vacations, to spots as cliché as her poetry. Her kids must think she's cool, seeking out the room where Keats died, but it's forty steps from American Express, tourist central. Every high school teacher goes there. What's next, a trip to Paris to write about the Left Bank? If Anderson didn't live in SF already, she would be writing about the cable cars and the fog. And Anderson always tells us what she and her partner had for lunch on the leafy terraces. (She recommends the "Kalamari.")"A kayak again. Blue Tahoe" reminds her of a kayak in "Kauai." Sounds like a nice life, honestly. Why can't she be happy being a high school teacher? Summer jaunts to intellectual tourist traps, kalamari on leafy terraces beside Blue Tahoe. Why try to write poetry? She just isn't creative. She tries every way to turn her timid observations into poetry, but it's just cliches in columns. Grade: C minus.

Trapped in amber
The epigraph and source of the book's title reads: "for it was not knowledge but unity that she desired, not inscriptions on tablets, nothing that could be written in any language known to men, but intimacy itself, which is knowledge, she had thought, leaning her head on Mrs. Ramsay's knee. (Woolf, To the Lighthouse)" As it turns out, there's quite a lot of inscriptions on the road to intimacy. Every poem references a famous person, artwork/artifact, or locale (on European tourist tours). Personal reminiscences and reflections are layered on top of this collecting work. The book, with the exception of one section (discussed below), feels like a leisure stroll through the corridors of (old-world) civilization. I'd prefer a more purposeful, or at least more urgent searching.

Against this background of gently privileged aestheticism, the section recapturing news photos from the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah fighting is certainly a shock. Here the writing is sharper, more incisive, in keeping with the fraught subject; even if the poems are way too literal (I wonder if a reprinting of the photos would do just as well, or even better). A few statements seem to me the height of banality. For example: "We who watch are in awe // of the wreck of the world, / destruction's beauty, its litter and smoke, / a beauty that tells us who we are."

All in all a disappointing collection. I hope that in the future Anderson will resist the prettiness of things encased in historical amber, and herself takes flight to the real objects of the world.

Bright Moments
Anderson captures a series of bright moments in these poems. While many of us would have let these moments slip by, Anderson finds in them meaning about life and love. Garrison Keillor used one of her poems on "Writers Almanac" and the rest live up to that choice. ... Read more