Poetry Books

Robert Lowell's poetry is praised for its technical brilliance, metrical complexity, and verbal ambiguity. In an earlier review of Lowell's Lord Weary's Castle (awarded Pulitzer Prize of Poetry in 1947) I compared reading his poetry to studying mathematics, too advanced mathematics.

Furthermore, I am often uncomfortable with Lowell's disaffection, mistrust, and anger (one critic calls it apocalyptic rage) evident both in his criticism of contemporary society, and in his confessional topics such as marital difficulties, drinking problems, and mental illness. And yet I keep coming back to Lowell's work to savor his remarkable command of language.

Life Studies, a blend of prose and poetry, is more explicitly personal than his earlier work. The prose section, titled 91 Revere Street, is quite exceptional, not simply for its dispassionate candor, but for its literary excellence. Lowell is almost brutal in his depiction of himself as a boy, offering no excuses for his insensitivity toward others. He is no less severe with his parents. Lowell's portraits of his grandparents, aunts, and uncles were equally candid, but more sympathetic.

Lowell reserves his later difficulties, including struggles with mental illness, for his poetry. Waking in the Blue, a haunting picture of fellow patients in a mental hospital, is immediately followed by an unsettling description of Lowell's return to his family, Home After Three Months Away. Soft Wood, dedicated to Harriet Winslow, who "was more to me than my mother", is deeply moving. Other family poems - like Dunbarton, Grandparents, and Sailing Home from Rapallo - have a poignant beauty. I also liked Beyond the Alps, the first poem in Life Studies, which reappears with an additional stanza as one of the last poems in For the Union Dead.

For the Union Dead has a broader span, addressing social issues and historical subjects, as well as confessional topics, and is thus more similar to Lord Weary's Castle. Hawthorne, Jonathan Edwards in Western Massachusetts, Water, The Old Flame, and the title poem, For the Union Dead offer a good sampling of this work.

The quality of a writer for us , it seems to me, is often defined by how much of ourselves we are willing to put into knowing their work. I read the poems in this collection, but am not tempted to reread them. They make sense and tell of Lowell's childhood, his relation to his father, his meditation on the way he first met his first wife and the way they have grown distant through the years, his sense of his grandfather's grandness as he takes him with him on a local tour, his friendships with other writers. I can read the poems and feel their meaning and sense quite clearly. This to my mind raises them above much poetic language which in many modern poetry writers does not have a context or a sense. Lowell does often tell a small story in his poem.
But there is for me , anyway, a certain absence of music , a certain lack of those kind of memorable lines I find in my beloved poets.
Reading other reviews of Lowell's poetry I see others see more in his work, feel it deeper than I do. They are the truer readers.

Robert Lowell is a giant in American poetry. He is pretty much unanimously considered one of the best of his generation. This book combines two of his volumes of poetry. One of those volumes is his masterpiece Life Studies--the reason why he is a giant in American poetry. This is his seminal work. No matter how you look at it, this is an important book of poetry. And an excellent book of poetry. Most of the poems are good and there are several phenomenal poems within. Life Studies alone belongs on any serious poetry connoisseur's shelf. Also in this book is arguably Lowell's second best collection (only Lord Weary's Castle might be better) For the Union Dead, which contains another masterpiece, "For the Union Dead" (and a favorite of mine "Hawthorne"). This is a book that poetry lovers of all kinds should have.

Lowell is of the vanguard of American twentieth century poets, a man who created many brilliant works other than the two joined in this volume. In such poems in Life Studies as Beyond the Alps and A Mad Negro Soldier Confined in Munich, as well as his portraits of various friends and family, we discover a man capable of both acid humor and outright sadness. However, in Life Studies, these excellent poems are overshadowed by the towering biographical essay 91 Revere Street. In this touching memoir, Lowell describes distant, illustrious relatives, Amy Lowell being a famous but ostracized example, friendships wrecked in childhood, disquietude over a girlfriend who soils herself in class (in his embarrassment, Lowell sits in it), his formative years on the periphery of polite, conservative Bostonian society, and his fathers coarse, difficult superiors and buddies that cropped up in the father's job with the Navy. Though his poems here are outstanding, an uncomfortable question arises when one considers this essay: Would Lowell have been better off to employ his time as a prose stylist, not a poet?

For the Union Dead validates Lowell's decision to declare poetry his mode of expression. Poems such as the dolorous My Last Evening with Uncle Devereaux Winslow and Terminal Days at Beverly Farm expose a man groping for hope after the deaths of close relatives; Waking in the Blue and Myopia: A night explore, respectively, Lowell's mental illness and attendant three month hospitalization, and a night of insomnia that becomes a maelstrom of tortured reflections and half-hewn thoughts; The Drinker explores alcoholism as a product of foiled love, with a question as to whether pathology or sheer carelessness and love of idleness is the underlying shibboleth. Water, the poem that stoked my love for Lowell, uses a maritime theme to express sorrow over a lost love. Beyond the Alps, from Life Studies, is reprised here with an elided stanza reinserted at the behest of coeval John Berryman.

Lowell is one of those poets so gifted, so erudite, so steeped in classical literature, it's hard to grasp that, as he explains it, he was "less rather than more bookish than most children." Much of the isolation evinced in Lowell's poetry, as well as the restlessness of his life, both as youth and adult, are radiantly eviscerated in these two collections.

I read this poem again on Martin Luther King Day, a fitting day for this poem, a tribute to the Union dead of the Civil War and a particular remembrance of the black soldiers who wore the uniform of the Union-- particularly of the Massachusetts 54th Regiment (made famous to non-Civil War students by the movie Glory several years ago).

The 54th Massachusetts was the first black regiment to march from the North to fight the Confederacy. These men were quite brave knowing that in battle they would likely get little or no quarter, and if captured they would most assuredly be sent south back to slavery. These men had much to prove, what with years of racism from North and South to be broken and defeated by their bravery and sacrifices-- not to mention the Confederate army that they would later face on the battlefield. They would win ever-lasting fame for their courage during their doomed assault on Fort Wagner at Charleston Harbor, South Carolina, July, 1863. The attack would be a night assault on this heavily guarded fort. The fighting would be intense and the 54th would not be successful. Their white colonel, Robert Gould Shaw would be killed, and almost half the regiment would be lost. The first Medal of Honor for a black man would be earned there.

They marched down Beacon Street, with the Massachusetts State House on one side and Boston Common on the other - off to war, off to death and glory on a twin mission; to fight for the Union and show the world that they were equal in ability to whites. Directly across the street from the Massachusetts State House on Beacon Street there now stands the brilliant monument by Augustus St. Gaudens, forever commemorating the 54th, the first black regiment and their white commander Colonel Robert Gould Shaw.

This monument on Beacon Hill is one of the finest monuments of any kind in the United States. As a tribute to Shaw and the 54th it is unparalleled in the physical world; but in the emotional world, the world of poetry, Robert Lowell comes quite close. Lowell brilliantly describes the monument to the 54th and works it into the life of Boston that foremost of abolition cities of the North. Standing before the 54th monument on Beacon Hill, as the crowds walk swiftly by and the traffic speeds along past the State House, one can almost hear the men breath as they are forever frozen in bronze on their march south to battle. There are few monuments in bronze as lifelike as this one: it is an incredible tribute to the 54th and their commander and adorns the city of Boston as fittingly as the obelisk at Bunker Hill or the colonial historical sites of Adams, Revere, Hancock, and several miles to the west, Lexington and Concord.

Lowell's "For the Union Dead" is a successful poem on so many levels and succeeds completely where Tate's "Ode to the Confederate Dead" so totally fails. It unifies time and place, and brings context and permanence where everything seems to be shifting and changing. As a tribute to the 54th and the Union dead of the Civil War its elements run as deep as the waters off the coast of Boston seen from the top of Beacon Hill so long ago when the skyscrapers didn't block the view.

Having started his education at Harvard, Lowell transfered to Kenyon College to study under John Crowe Ransom another of Vanderbilt's Fugitives, like Allen Tate and Donald Davidson. It is an astounding thing that the two greatest Civil War poems of modern times ("Lee in the Mountains" and "For the Union Dead") and the worst ("Ode to the Confederate Dead") should be written by poets with Nashville connections. Lowell went on to graduate school to study under Robert Penn Warren, another Vanderbilt "Fugitive".

St. Gaudens placed a Latin inscription on the monument, the motto of the Society of the Cincinnati (a society of Revolutionary War officers started by George Washington and Henry Knox): "Relinquit Omnia Servare Rem Publicam". The translation is: "He left behind everything to save the Republic". Lowell opened his poem with this Latin phrase but changed the singular "he" to "they" in the Latin so that his poem would refer to all the men of the 54th not just its white commander, Robert Gould Shaw, to read: "Relinquunt Omnia Servare Rem Publicam".

"For the Union Dead" was published in 1964 during the height of the Civil Rights movement. Active in Civil Rights efforts, it is perfectly understandable that Lowell should have written this poem of unity and appreciation with concern, too, that the past should be remembered and its lessons learned. The battlefield of Fort Wagner had been by then reclaimed by the sea at Charleston Harbor and the monument to the 54th had fallen into disrepair. In fact, it was during this time that the St. Gaudens monument had been removed and stored in a crate to prevent damage from "shaking" from the construction of the underground Boston Commons parking garage. So, the battleground is gone, and Shaw's monunument is gone (but only temporarily), and history fades while "progress" continues speedily obliterating the memory of those that have come before.

"The stone statues of the abstract Union Soldier
grow slimmer and younger each year-
wasp-waisted, they doze over muskets
and muse through their sideburns . . ."

Lowell's brilliant poem is his way of retaining the past and ensuring that important historical memory is not lost forever. The men of the 54th Massachusetts, black and white, were leaders in bringing an end to slavery and establishing equality under the law for blacks in America. The story of their bravery and sacrifice is important to understanding American history and the Civil War. These men demonstrated with their actions and their blood that they were equals and merited equal positions in American society. As Americans North and South we ought to continue to embrace their memory and appreciate the many challenges that they overcame and the lessons that they taught us with their sacrifices at Fort Wagner and elsewhere.

We can look back to the 54th Massachusetts as a standard bearer in the struggle for Civil Rights in America. In the 1980s, my husband was privileged to be part of an effort to restore the St. Gaudens monument to its original beauty and power. Lowell's poem is a tribute to this beautiful work of art, and the men of the 54th Massachusetts who so inspired it. It is our duty a to remember our past, appreciate and commemorate our war dead, and learn those lessons that they underscored for later generations with their lives.

"Two months after marching through Boston,
half the regiment was dead;
at the dedication,
William James could almost hear the bronze Negroes breathe."

This is one of the finest poems of the 20th century and stands with "Lee in the Mountains" as one of the two great modern poems of the Civil War.

I had the great fortune to be one of the contributing authors of this award-winning anthology. Never have I been given such an incredible gift. This picture of the journey of women is inspiring, empowering and endearing. I've read it over many times and whether I am reading about "shoulders" that can take it all or the challenge of raising children, I see myself and applaud my growth. A must read for all women, of all ages.

As a contributor to this powerfully written anthology about the lessons learned from living by women of color, I was not only honored to be a part of this work, but humbled by the raw honesty of each story. The healing nature of each story, brings with it a balm for the broken-hearted and wounded spirit, while allowing those of us who have triumphed "through it all" to celebrate together! "Life's Spices" gives women the permission to speak, to no longer live in silence and to embrace a circle of women that allows us to stand strong.

Sometimes you pick-up a book and wonder from the title if there is really anything inside the cover that will interest you. Such was my experience with a book titled "Life's Spices From Seasoned Sistahs: A collection of life stories from mature women of color". The title gave me no insight on why a 61-year-old white man might enjoy reading this anthology of stories from women. What a most pleasant surprise awaited me once I opened it and began pouring over the pages and discovering that people are people regardless of gender or race.

Editor Vicki Ward did an excellent job of pulling diverse people and backgrounds into a mix that makes exploring between the covers a real joy. This book is not just for women of color; it is for all readers. I found inspiration from the life experiences shared in this book and feel that wisdom was gained by my reading it. There are not many books that you can say that about any more.

I fully recommend this book for all readers. It gets the American Authors Association's top book rating of FIVE STARS. It also gets my personal recommendation.

LIFE'S SPICES FROM SEASONED SISTAHS, edited by Vicki Ward, is a wonderful collection of short stories, essays, and poems by mature women of all races. The collection is divided into the following themes: Sistahs' Joys and Struggle with Family, Sistahs' Joys...Life's Pain, Love, Humility, and Other Spices that Flavor Relationships, Mothers Use Love, Forgiveness, Compassion, Wisdom..., Seasonings for Self-Esteem, Sistahs' Survivin' and Working It Out, Death Can Be an Awakening, and The Spirit...Always Present.

Within each theme are related stories of joy, pain, happiness, and sorrow. As each woman puts pen to paper to tell their account, as no one else can, you will find them captivating and filled with wisdom. Each poem is also overflowing with strength and weakness and finally some with acceptance of the hand the authors' have been dealt and the power to forge ahead.

The editor has done an outstanding job selecting the contributors to tell their stories along with providing interesting author biographies and resources for women in all States and some provinces. The writing is exemplary and each narrative is distinct. The tantalizing epigraph and forward provide the how and the why. This collection can serve as an excellent gift for a special woman in your life and once read, can serve as a great conversation piece. We are more alike than we believe but at the same time different in our experiences and responses. Nonetheless, women are the corner stone of the world, as these stories will demonstrate.

Reviewed by Dawn R. Reeves
of The RAWSISTAZ™ Reviewers

Life's Spices From Seasoned Sistahs, is a collection of stories by different women from all walks of life. From African American, to Asian, to Mexican women, all of the sistahs have a story to tell. Each piece is uplifting, wisdom-filled, and presented with just enough seasoning to add to life's gumbo of joys, sorrows, and heartbreaks.

I found this book to be an excellent read. Each woman shared experiences that helped to mold them into strong, proud and wise women. In most cases, the stories were no longer than two are three pages, but each was packed with lessons to aid the reader in this journey we call life.

If you are into nonfiction and enjoy reading how people triumph over life's snares, you'll love Life's Spices From Seasoned Sistahs.

T. RHYTHM KNIGHT
APOOO BookClub

Like Warm Honey is an amazing book, I have already read it twice from cover to cover! This is THE book to read if you need strength, encouragement and hope. Every poem will touch your heart in some way; the author does a great job illustrating situations that most of us can relate to. I would definitely recommend this book to everyone.

Like Warm Honey touched my heart and soul and brought tears to my eyes. I felt the growth of the author as I read her poems. I could look back in my life and relate to some of her life experiences. Great Job! Consuella!

Ms. Raynor really connects to her readers. The love that she has for her family is evident in every selection. I was able to relate to many of the selections on love and spirituality. She will inspire you.

This book touches deep down in your soul and pulls out the joy and pain of life, love it.

This book touched me, there is no book out there thats goo from start to finish. I have read it three times already and plan on reading it again very soon. I cant wait until she writes another I'll be first in line.

"Little Savage" is that rare specimen of contemporary poetry; it is a debut collection by a young poet who has already mastered her craft and not only takes her writing seriously but has something serious to say with her writing.

Her poetry utilizes Ancient Greek Myth, classical music, and occasional glimpses of the young poet's childhood to construct an elegantly haunted house where a ghostly echo for the truth of recollection howls. From my perspective not one poem in the entirety of this 67 page incantation strikes a false note, no pun intended.

Most awards given to youthful/aspiring poets nowadays are given out of desperation for new material, the ceremonial backscratching between the old and young that must go in the arts for them to continue existing,
and the desire for critical blurbs in which more accomplished poets can flex their verbal muscles with false praise. Emily Fragos is a violin found in a haystack of twisted musical cords, you might say. Exciting, energetic and haunting work.

What is most remarkable about Emily Fragos' poetry is the clear emotional throughline in each poem. Fragos guides the reader into a field of feeling that unfolds with increasing intensity. For example,

With a stick I drew stick faces in the hardened
ground, touching my people
with the long, cold finger,
rubbing the lines so they turned to crust
and weathered away like the oak
outside my window.
(Solstice)

The poems explore a variety of emotional registers, from contemplative to jaunty, but whatever the mood, they are transportation to a unique world of sensibility offering glimplses of paintings by Velasquez, Vermeer, Brueghel, the music of Gould, Callas, Scarlatti, the whimsy of personified of Sorrow & the quotidian sublimity of an overdue library book or a cat show. All thngs become magical in Fragos' hands.

Emily Fragos is our ambassador from the world of close, close attention being paid. Too often we rush by the best and worst of our human-ness, which is where the really interesting stuff is hidden. Poems like these remind us of what poetry is for--every line is under intense psychic pressure, there is not a shred of sentimentality, and not a word is wasted. "Severe" is not usually a word used as praise, but here it is very apt. "Little Savage" is wonderful.

Emily Fragos has long had a kind of underground fame in New York City. Finally her first collection has arrived... and it fulfills every expectation: artful, revealing, soulful, and full of empathy and passion. This is what happens when a heart that cares about the broken things of the world pumps ink onto the page. No stylish chicanery or pyrotechnics. Not fanciful spelling or self indulgence. Just heartful revelation and empathy for the world. In a world where posers fill shelves, Fragos is the real thing: From "Host," my favorite poem: "There are two worlds I know of: the vast illumined and the place where I am. I need the other the way a virus needs a host...And my body inhabited suffers and wonders: Whose hands are these? Whose hair?" A book of top drawer poems by a top drawer poet.

Emily Fragos' wonderous "Little Savage" is the best argument I've ever read not to rush out a first book. It's clearly the work of a poet who's honed her ideas and art over time. The poems arrive as perfectly polished as stones shaped by a river.

This is a wonderful poetry book as is all of Douglas Florian's books. It actually reminds you of how wonderful poetry can be and how it can be easy to share with students. This book teaches about many types of lizards, frogs and you guessed it, Polliwogs! A wonderful book of poetry even for those who claim to dislike it.

The poems are gross enough for my 5 year old son with illustrations cool enough for my 6 year old daughter and language clever enough for their 40+ yo English teacher mom.

My two-year-old son is a *huge* reptile fan, and he loves this book. The playful language is wonderful, and it's an inspiring way to talk and think about different types of animals. It's one of those books that *I* love reading, too!

This is a book of poems about various reptiles and amphibians. The poems are great; their content is funny and rhythmic. Through the poems we learn about the various animals. The illustrations are very creative collages that are unique compared to most other children's books.

The poems are short and to the point, and his illustrations are extremely creative.

This would make a great read aloud during a unit on poetry or reptiles and anphibians.

This delightful book of strange things and clever rhymes is a joy to read. The rhymes are imaginative, instructive, silly and alliterative. This gem is appealing on many levels: the light-hearted poetry, the colorful, whimsical illustrations and nature's gallery of fascinating creatures to stimulate youthful curiosity.

With a granddaughter in the first grade, I am always looking for books that offer attractive illustrations, but also incorporate ideas that lead to an appreciation of words. After reading each poem/page, my granddaughter was soon clamoring to read the rhymes herself: "But did you know that alligators/ Sometimes swallow second graders?"

Suddenly, each page is her favorite, like "The Iguana": "I wouldn't wanna/ Be an iguana_" We choose from the skink, the gecko, the cobra, the Komodo dragon, the box turtle and even the polliwog: "We polliwoggle./ We polliwiggle./ We shake in lakes/ Make wakes/And wriggle." By the time we reach "The Bullfrog", she has lowered her voice to copy the croaking bullfrog. This book is a delight to share with a child, an occasion for tongue-twisting rhymes and giggles. The highest praise I can offer is that I have ordered more of Florian's exceptional work. Luan Gaines/ 2005.

Dwight, please give us another 20 years of words.

dwight yoakam has always been my favorite rockabilly, and he will always be. this is a great book and yes a must have. love the lyrics, even knowing i have the lyrics already on his cd's i still love the book a worth haveing if youre a fan of dwight yoakam's. worth every penny. a happy fan

I have every CD Dwight Yokham has ever put out, plus ever video clip he sings on CMT, and I would love nothing better to come to the States to hear him sing live in concert, as I have recently discovered I am terminally ill and there is no cure or treatment for my disease, as it so rare. I will keep on watching CMT to get as much as Dwight Yokahm as I can before this dreadful disease claims me, and then when I get to heaven I am going to ask God to put CMT on in heaven, so I can still listen to him up there. I am 46, happily married with 2 children, Tamara who is 26 and simon who is 24 and getting married on Easter Sunday next year, and hopefully, I will still be around until then.

Monica Sprott

Dwight Yoakam does not write complex lyrics. What he writes are lyrics of deep emotion and unsurpassed longing. Without the twang-and-swing of his honky-tonk melodies, these songs are reduced to their bared bones, stripped and displayed in all their anguish and despair. From the straightforward "It won't hurt when I fall down from this barstool; it won't hurt when I stumble in the street; it won't hurt 'cause this whiskey eases misery; but even whiskey cannot ease your hurting me" to the more thought-provoking "Don't look inside, don't look there, 'cause you might find yourself somewhere, walking around lost and alone, without one clue that it's a long way home" Dwight speaks to the heart and the mind, and to deeper emotions.

"Twelve Years of Words" is printed as a simple, straightforward book of poetry, introduced with Dwight's eloquent, thoughtful prose. It is true that anyone who has the CDs already has the lyrics, printed on each CD insert. But there is a beauty in this presentation, all of his poems gathered together into one slim little volume without the music. I'm very much hoping that, in time, there will be "Twenty Years of Words" and it will be updated as he continues to write those simple, elegant, words.

I saw this book in the public library, and I knew I had to have a copy of my own. Yoakam was reared in Columbus, Ohio, where I live, and I think he is the freshest talent in music in any genre. His lyrics are simple and direct and tell wonderful stories; it's as if he can look into everyone else's hearts when it comes to differing emotions. I am a fan of this man's music, and he's a great actor, too. I appreciate that he has not sold himself to pop music like other country stars -- but then again, I don't consider him a country star. He's carved a niche of his own. Bless you, Dwight, and your mom (she still lives here!).

John's work reminds me of a Zen saying-- that you can never step into the same river twice. (Because, as with everything, the river is constantly changing and becoming new all the time). So it is with John's poetry-- it will present new and differing meanings, patterns and images with each reading.

He writes as he feels-- not to some prescribed form or method but simply as he is. Longitudes is a delightful read that you'll wish to share over and over again. My favorite line is from the poem, "The One-Legged Hopping Man-- "In a world of the misbegotten, perfection is seen as error ..."

Do yourself a favor and read this collection.

This book is like a tray full of interestingly shaped and tasty poetic hors d'oeuvres. The sense I get from these damn fine and fun poems, is that of the eternal college student, someone never quite finished with his master's thesis and quite comfortable, nay, ecstatic, with the fact. These are poems full of history, philosophy, art and gritty street hunger, lust and thirst.

You're walking down the richly-appointed hallway of a luxurious Florntine palace, basking in stupefied wonder and awe of your surroundings. Suddenly, one if the lavish tapestries is yanked away and you're left looking at what's really there-- curious water marks on the wallpaper. That's what reading Birkbeck's poems is like; the yanking away of apparent reality, and the glimpse underneath of the virtual reality. This poet is a magician!

I use the word "Lunatic" in a flattering way, of course, when I deal with John Birkbeck's poems. His references to the moon are quite cryptic and laden with spooky mystery. Just as in the body of his work, one dangles between humour and horror. Many of his poems are a sort of wake-up call for those of us who walk on the thin ice of the reality of the inner life.

Although John Birkbeck is sparing in his words and in the use of punctution, this, oddly, makes the sound and sense of the poems more cogeant and ingestible. He is a master at complex bathos and yet manages to be quite funny, too. One does not "review" a book like this, one wallows in it!

Mr Neruda captures the feeling and emotion of love in these written works. They are from the movie IL POSTINO and have incredible impact.

after watching il postino the italian film the poetry in the movie had me craving more. excellent what a talent how lucky his wife was to have so much love directed toward her.

POETRY by Pablo Neruda

And it was at that age...Poetry arrived
in search of me. I don't know, I don't know where
it came from, from winter or a river.
I don't know how or when,
no, they were not voices, they were not
words, nor silence,
but from a street I was summoned,
from the branches of night,
abruptly from the others,
among violent fires
or returning alone,
there I was without a face
and it touched me.

I did not know what to say, my mouth
had no way
with names
my eyes were blind,
and something started in my soul,
fever or forgotten wings,
and I made my own way,
deciphering
that fire
and I wrote the first faint line,
faint, without substance, pure
nonsense,
pure wisdom
of someone who knows nothing,
and suddenly I saw
the heavens
unfastened
and open,
planets,
palpitating plantations,
shadow perforated,
riddled
with arrows, fire and flowers,
the winding night, the universe.

And I, infinitesimal being,
drunk with the great starry
void,
likeness, image of
mystery,
I felt myself a pure part
of the abyss,
I wheeled with the stars,
my heart broke loose on the wind.

When I first read this poem, something within me blossomed. It was as if Neruda had found a way to pry open my soul and let the True Light, the True Love, and the True Life of my life to finally come forth; naked, unashamed, and gloriously beautiful.

Even though this book only contains ten little poems, you will get so much enjoyment out of each and every one of them. I even gave a copy of this book to someone whose primary reading interests were that of Mad Magazine and the classifieds and he said he never imagined that reading could be so sensual and yet so soulful.

May your heart and soul break wide open and may the radiant jewels that are within come forth for all to see.

Peace and blessings...

A great, tiny smattering of love poems by the great Chilean poet and activist, mainly featuring the work of his used in the Italian film, "Il Postino" (if you're a poet and you haven't seen it, you're not actually a poet. You're a person with a journal filled likely with meandering words and diary ruminations and you will give birth to children with monocled vision due to their cyclopian disformities). A must-have for anyone deigning to create poetry of the love stripe, and totally affordable. A perfect launhcing pad for anyone not yet aware of Neruda's incredible amount of excellent, excellent work.

Love, Ten Poems by Pablo Neruda is a romantic short collection by one of the most sensual and romantic poets I have ever read. Neruda draws all of your senses into his world and you want to stay there, never to leave. One wants to find the beauty as he paints it for you, the reader. His wife is the muse of most of his love sonnets. As Neruda says, "Love is so short, forgetting is so long."

I recommend this incredible poet to all who love to read poetry and to those who long to find their love and especially to those who have that love in their life. Neruda's romance will stir your heart and have you soaring.

Read it with your significant other and the emotions will carry you both up and away. Neruda's poems are powerful and their beauty sears into your heart with his words echoing long after. These poems were featured in the movie, The Postman. You cannot help feeing affected by the power of Neruda. He has to be one of THE most powerful masters of the written word.

Most of the poems here are beautiful. Some convey the feeling of love gained and others tell the story of love lost or the perils of love.

I really like the poem "Thyrsis and Amaranta" by Jean De La Fontaine hilariously true!! It tells the story of a young man who is in love with a girl who doesn't even know he longs for her. He hints and clues his feelings to her and in the end-- well, if you've ever fallen in love and found out someone has already beaten you to the person you want to be with, you'll instantly get this poem.

There are other poems here that have haunting truths like "They That Have Power" by William Shakespeare. A must read for anyone who knows someone who uses their looks for the disadvantage of others.

This book is a must have for anyone who is interested in poetry. Anyone who is interested in love. And anyone who wants to laugh here and there at a general truth of people who are in love. A real good buy.

Though this book was filled with a grand assortment of poems, it did not strike my fancy as I thought it would. When I first ran across the book, I was enthusiastic about reading it for the very reason that love poems are appealing to me, as I am a high school girl.

Before I began to scroll through the pages of poems, I had high expectations for this book. I envisioned myself basking in the sun in a hammock, reading endless love poems, all of which were appealing to my romantic nature. However, I found that the majority of these poems were dull and repetitive. They did not remind me of the romantic fantasy that can be found in fairy tales, or the type of romantic poem that lovers write to one another.

This book consisted of a variety of different authors as well, many who were either from a different origin or not well known. Not only were many of their poems repetitive, but also difficult to understand and envision in one's own mind.

While the majority of this book was not appealing to me, there were some poems in this book that I found I enjoyed. An example is, "When You Are Old," by WB Yeats. I enjoyed this poem because I was able to envision myself, years down the road, with the love of my life. I connected with this poem because I consistently imagine myself growing old with someone and loving him unconditionally, just as the poem insinuated.

But true Love is a durable fire
In the mind ever burning;
Never sick, never old, never dead,
From itself never turning. ~Walter Ralegh

I am naturally drawn to tiny books and this book was no exception. I saw it and instantly fell in love with the red library binding and gold embossing on the fabric cover. This is one of those books you want to carry around with you in your pocket to read on a sunny day while sitting on a park bench.

While most of the poems were new to me, I did find lines to make any poet drown in the pure beauty of words. "In My Sky at Twilight" is a paraphrase of the 30th poem in Raindranath Tagore's The Gardener. The images are lush and mingle emotion with nature. "In Former Days" by Bhartrhari (5th Century) is witty and beautiful in its simplicity. Two lovers are so in love they forget their separateness and then drift back to being "you" and "me." The poem is a mere four lines and yet it provides a intimate look at how lovers feel when in love and when they drift apart. I loved a few lines in "The Palanquin" where a butterfly lands on delicate skin and transfers colors onto the lover's skin.

The poems are divided into 7 sections:

Definitions and Persuasions
Love and Poetry
Praising the Loved One
Pleasures and Pains
Fidelity and Inconstancy
Absence, Estrangement and Parting
Love Past

You may recognize poems by Lord Byron, Edgar Allan Poe, William Shakespeare, Walt Whitman and Dorothy Parker. I was pleasantly surprised by poems by Leconte De Lisle, Pablo Neruda and Dioskorides.

You will find a wide range of love poems. This book contains selections from ancient China to modern America. These poems present the universal experience of the human heart.

~The Rebecca Review

This is both an excellent and beautiful collection of
love poetry collected from many different poets, male
and female, and from many different eras, and from
many different lands...but the focus is Love...and the
responses to Love...
The poems are grouped in sections. The titles of
the sections are: Definitions and Persuasions; Love
and Poetry; Praising the Loved One; Pleasures and
Pains; Fidelity and Inconstancy; Absence, Estrangement,
and Parting; Love Past.
The "selecter" and editor, Peter Washington, says
the best words about the nature, scope, and purpose
of this book in his "Foreword": "My selection of poems
for the anthology which follows has been guided by
simple principles. Each piece had to be first-rate
in its own way, and each had to contribute something
distinctive to our understanding of love. Where there
is similarity of mood, there is difference of emphasis;
where there is repetition of an idea, there is variety
in music. The juxtaposition of apparently comparable
lyrics brings out their differences, and although the
poems are arranged in broad categories which follow
an obvious sequence, it is the echoes they set up in
one another which enrich them all."
-- Peter Washington.
There are so many fine poems that it is very difficult
to pick a sample--but this is very fine indeed:
* * * * * * * * *
In the moonlit chamber, always she thinks of him
Soft wisps of silken willows, languor in the air
of spring.
Verdant were the grasses beyond the gates;
At their parting, she heard the horses neigh.

Draperies patterned of gold kingfishers;
Within, fragrant candle melts in tears.
Falling petals, the morning plaint of the cuckoo,
Green-gauze windows -- fragments of an illusive
dream.

-- Wen T'ing-Yun (?813-870)
[Trans. William R. Schultz]

I love this little book. It's chock full of poetic gems, yet each one is so different. The differences in variety are surprising...there are different moods, cadences, emphases.

The poems are arranged in broad categories and follow a rather natural progression from the joys of meeting to the pleasures and pains of being "in love," to an absence of one's beloved and past loves.

Some poets are represented more extensively than are others. These include John Donne, Boris Pasternak, Anna Akhmatova and Christina Rossetti, among others. I don't think anyone who loves good poetry will complain about his disproportionate representation, however. The poets named above are so good, and their ideas so universal, that not repeating them would have been the mistake.

Although all of these poems concentrate on a universally recognized aspect of love, the perspectives vary sharply. There are poems from ancient India, classical Greece, medieval Japan, renaissance England, 19th century France and modern-day America.

The one quality all of these poems share is first-rate writing. You will no doubt find some poems you prefer over others, but you won't find poems that are "better" than others. They are all of the highest quality.

Another thing I like about this series of books is their size. They're small enough to carry in a purse or even a laptop case. I read mine on the train, on the bus, while waiting for the bus, anywhere, really. I couldn't think of a way to improve them.

Sometimes when you pick up a book you have no way of knowing it will be an instant classic. When I first read the work of Jackie Young there was a fluid cadence to the way she made poetry come alive. It danced, it twirled and begged to be set to music. It took you by the hand and said, "Let me teach you why I live and breathe poetry and how no experience I encounter is exempt from being immortalized in verse." As I'd sit back and follow along with the words of her latest offering I felt like the layers were being pulled back on the situation she was describing and I was carefully pulled along like a voyeur for the ride. From the first poem (which may have been back in 1999 or 2000) I knew there was a collection of poetry somewhere on the foreseeable horizon for Miss Young and, so, when she blessed the world with her first poetic offering Love's Reparations: The Learning Curve between Heartache and Healing, I was among the very first to cheer her on and offer my undying support. I'm thrilled that I did and you will be too. Buy it.

Jackie Young's collection, LOVE'S REPARATIONS is a beautiful, honest, truthful and talent-filled compilation of poetry. The personal pieces are thought-provoking and will resonate long after the last poem is read.

Choosing favorites from this collection is almost impossible because each poem has a beauty of its own. LOVE'S REPARATIONS is divided into three sections: Heartache, Learning Curve and Healing. Each of the poems in the separate sections reflects in earnest the feelings of loving, healing and learning from one's experiences. "Last Supper" uses metaphors of food to acknowledge a lover's heartbreak. "Bewildered" is taking a look at one's self and not recognizing who you are anymore. "Musings" is a beautiful piece about becoming one with your poetry. "Homecoming" is welcoming back love after not embracing it due to heartbreak. "Harvest" is about cultivating love. "Peace" is about finding just that. Finally, "Baby Steps" is learning how to follow in God's wake by taking little steps at a time until you learn how to walk with the Lord.

LOVE'S REPARATIONS is a metaphorical and lyrical collection that made me smile, cry and most of all reflect. The poems are to be read slowly so you can absorb their meaning and understand their truth. Young's collection speaks eloquently about the pain of heartbreak, how we can learn from past mistakes and begin to walk the path of healing. Whether the poem was long or short, the strength of its meaning are easily discerned. Young is a very talented poet who is able to use metaphors in a way to capture the emotional depths of each poem. My words cannot adequately reflect my feelings after reading this collection, but I can say poetry lovers and readers alike will be awestruck by this book, it is just that good.

Reviewed by Cashana Seals
of The RAWSISTAZ Reviewers

I simply was not prepared for what I found laced, tucked, splattered, carved, and lovingly presented on the pages of Love's Reparations. It starts with A Dream Deferred, a beautiful work that makes you want to tip away quietly, feeling you have stumbled into an inner sanctum of someone's soul, and continues, poem after poem, masterpiece after masterpiece, with a vulnerability and authenticity that will leave you changed -- forever. Jackie Young gives of herself; a self that hopefully she'll give us much, much more of through her profound artistry in years to come.

No matter what the profession, there are only two types of people in this world: those who are called, and those who call themselves - and Love's Reparations is without a doubt the line that separates the two...

In times like these, when anybody is allowed to feel comfortable calling him/herself a poet, it's an unfortunate consequence that respect for the true craft of writing is ultimately lost in a sea of pretenders, wanna-be's, and never-gonna-be's with dreams of delusionary grandeur, loving nothing more than the sound of their own names coming out of everyone else's mouths. To counter all the claptrap, we need refreshing reminders of just what true creativity and inspired writing really looks & sounds like, lest we all fall into the same stupor of blind, mind-numbing praise for the mediocre - and, in light of that fact, thank God for Jackie Young.

Love's Reparations is the clarion call for true artistry in its purest form, and that call is all at once halting, invigorating, and inescapable. Every single offering gives you pause, and just when you think you're ready to move on, you can't help pausing again, wondering just how it so slyly alters the essence of your very being.

Consider this passage from "Merger":

'I gave myself over to you
feeding you the maximum daily allowance
of my love
until only you remained
and I,
I became a chalk outline in my own life.'

And this passage from "Rude Awakening":

'Shamefully, painfully
I glance at the clock
realizing that the hour it silently screams at me
matters not.
My heart knows it's half past forever and you're not coming
back.'

Despite how much we all know it hurts, heartbreak never sounded so good.

But don't be fooled by the title. Love may be the main course, but Love's Reparations serves up plenty of other entrees for your intellectual appetite. Check out this outstanding haiku:

'crayon mixed with crime tape
they hopscotch around silhouettes
prayers can't attend school'

And this jarring passage from "i built me a daddy outta words":

'we talking, creating new worlds between us, new words
some harsh, some kind
all of them ours
'til i found my words asking things,
looking for answers that my daddy didn't have
cause I hadn't given him THOSE words...'

With laconic grace like this, Jackie proves herself an absolute master at transcribing the profound brevity of emotion - and, as with all masters, this is a skill that can never be taught.

And for all the pretenders out there who think quantity is more important than quality and whose offerings are, as a friend of mine once put it, "as deep as a puddle" - this excerpt from "Musings" says it all:

'Tell me to do for myself what I encourage in others:
Breathe
Be in the moment
Become the poet...and the poem.'

In recent years, I've found myself wondering just who among our generation would take the mantle of responsibility for our collective cultural voice, especially as we witness the quickly fading twilight of Nikki, Maya, and Sonia's careers...well I can worry no longer: Jackie Young is the new standard by which all poetic excellence should be measured, and her lyrical genius deserves nothing less than our respect, admiration, and undying support.

Jackie Young's Love Reparations is, by far, one of the best poetic reads I have come across in contemporary literature. The poetry in this wonderful book takes the reader on a journey of love lost to love gained to love's redemption.

The subtitle says it all ""the learning curve between heartache and healing." This learning curve leaves impressions on one's heart and mind as the writings are written so clearly that each piece brings out an experience that we all have gone through and can relate to. Each work paints a vivid picture of what Ms. Young seeks to convey.

Like the works of great poets past, Jackie Young leaves the reader wanting more and also with memorable quotables such as, "I open my mouth to capture every drop of you," and "Sometimes a thing once broken simply becomes more of what it is at its core." A beautiful work of poetry this truly is. I definitely give this book two thumbs up.

Coulee Eidos

APOOO BookClub