Poetry Books

Critics describe Crooker's poetry here as "a sublime tonic against the darkness" or "spilling over with energy and movement" or "exquisite." The work in Line Dance is all that, of course. Such critical praise is justified and deserved, but leaves out two important aspects readers need to know. One, regardless of topic -- death, autism, failure, loss -- Barbara Crooker distills beauty from it. Two, her joyous words will be easily understood by readers. She welcomes readers into her world and makes them feel at home.

In "Blues for Karen" Crooker reaches out to a dead friend the best way she knows how, through words and images:

How could you die? We weren't done talking yet.
So I am trying to call you using the morning glories,
whose blue mouths are open to the sky,
whose throats are white stars,
thinking those tendrils could trellis upward,
hand over little green hand, so tenacious,
they hang on in any storm...

Crooker's use of metaphors is reader-friendly. We can all relate to her descriptions with a sense of wonder. This excerpt from "Zero at the Bone" takes us to a frozen place where the wintry season joins the unwritten lines of the heart:

The scouring light of winter
scrubs whatever it falls on,
the bright whiteness revealing
all the small incursions,
marks and stains of another year.
In the bare bones of trees, we see
old nests, broken branches, bagworm,
gall, all that was hidden by summer's
green scrim. Now we are at the heart
of things, the bone chill
of zero, the closed eye
of the pond. No secrets.

Buried within "The VCCA Fellows Visit the Holiness Baptist Church, Amherst, Virginia" is one of the sweetest, most touching and comforting ruminations on death I've ever read:

...a deacon speaks of his sister,
who's "gone home," and I realize he doesn't mean
back to Georgia, but she's passed over. I float
on this sweet certainty, of a return not to the bland
confection of wispy clouds and angels in nightshirts,
but to childhood's kitchen, a dew-drenched June
morning, roses tumbling by the back porch.

These poems represent "the thin rind of memory" protecting the juicy pulp that is Barbara Crooker's life and poetic mind. Highly recommended.

Barbara Crooker's poem are easy to like. She has a flair for words and images that touch the heart. It helps to read this book from beginning to end becuase she has organized the poems so beautifully around the central poem, "Line Dance."

In this, her second collection of poems, Barbara Crooker explores the territory of what brings us joy, of what breaks our hearts. Grief and love. "Grief and heart could be the same word," she suggests. "Both have / five letters; both rhyme / with blood." It's not sadness that occupies these poem, rather the idea that in spite of grief, there is joy in the simple things life offers: the swelling bud of a pink peony, grey juncos at her bird feeder, the autistic son who surprises her, the dead who dance at a wedding. Crooker has the ability to bring light into the darkest spaces; her poems burst with color: lemons and the lavish light of yellow, red hearts in windows facing a snowy landscape, brown-eyed sunflowers. There is music in these poems, in her deft use of language, in the surprising and oh-so satisfying way Crooker can bring in that last image, like a bow at the end of a performance. You will leave these poems dancing and satisfied, too, that you were allowed a few moments in the world of her extraordinary poetic ear and eye.

I'm riffing on the warm air, the wing beats of my lungs
that can take this all in, flush the heart's red peony,
then send it back without effort or thought.
And the trees breathe in what we exhale,
clap their green hands in gratitude, bend to the sky.

What Crooker has done with "dance" is splendid, so much so I will never see the word in the same manner for the rest of my life. Every poem is excellent, and all of them seamlessly unified with "la danse de vivre." Bravo to her!

Larry D. Thomas
2008 Texas Poet Laureate

Close to twenty years ago, I read a Crooker poem, "Raspberries," in the collection, The Lost Children. Until then, I had never found such erotic beauty in a fruit ... and beauty/redemption in what scars our lives, as in "Christ Comes to Centralia," from the same collection.

With Line Dance the simple beauty remains, but each seems filled with particulars, e.g., in describing the Pennsylvania mountains, Crooker reveals: "... Blue, Allegheny, Kittatinny / Tuscarora, this big-muscled, broad-backed / hunk of a state." Or in listing the winters of impressionist artists: "Caillebotte's chimneys exhale like glamorous / women in a cafe."

Crooker's strong metaphorical language inhabits the lines, but the poems seem airy and natural. Each word is perfectly placed; the line endings are natural--not straining toward the jarring/illogical effect of much contemporary poetry; and the final lines are lessons for anyone who has ever wondered how to end a poem.

Other reviewers have mentioned the "autism poems," and anyone who reads such poems as "45s, LPs" will understand how, as in other fields of endeavour, less is more! The "less" in this and other poems that deal with the autism of her son, breaks our hearts--less is more.

And, perhaps, in this amateur review, I should end with less: Buy and Read this Book.

This book got me a husband! Try it and see what you might get! I read it in 2001 and fell in love with Molly's poetry. I decided to take her class at the UC Davis Extension. There was a very cute guy in the class with me...today I have a handsome husband who writes excellent poetry and two adorable children, all thanks to "Listening to Winter!"

Molly Fisk's volume of poetry, Listening to Winter, is candid, clear and understated as her stories unfold. And the reader, at the end of each line, wishes for blurred focus, hopes the next line will not confirm what has just been read. Themes of survival, abandonment, and truth-telling are interwoven with a rich pictoral landscape. I took away immense strength and admiration for Fisk's facility with language. A must read for students of life, language and women.

Molly plunges you into the terror and humiliation of the greatest personal harm, the most intimate human betrayal, with raw courage and boldness, with the keenest understanding, the clearest, most vivid images, with exquisite, painful, beauty. She tells the truth of it. This is a gift beyond measure. Finally, you're not alone anymore. The closet door has been flung wide open and love becomes possible once more. She makes it so. Molly Fisk is a fine poet. I can't recommend her work highly enough.

"Listening to Winter" is full of wonderful poetry, the poem containing the title line "Hunter's Moon" is so evocative of my youth that I gobbled the rest of the book in an orgy of reading and feelings. Then, hungry for more, read each line again slowly, as if sipping great wine.

"Sugar & Salt" let me FEEL what before I'd only glimpsed. "Couples" made me cry out in pain, yearning to talk to my long dead father. "Veterans" renewed the thrill of having lived when so many didn't, made me rejoice I came back whole enough to be healed by my loving wife. This wonderful book reafirmed my joy of being alive, of being part of this lovely world and in love.

If you love great poetry, buy this book!

Bright Blessing on you Molly, where-ever you are. Thank you.

If you have ever cared for a woman, buy this book.

Thank you Ms. Fisk for your terrifying but wonder insights into the word of pain, shame & humiliation shared by all incest survivors. It is heartening & frightening to realize both that we ALL, all men can & could be betrayers and abusers of trust. Users and abusers of those either in our power or under our protection if we just follow our desires. We could be but are not, are not because we chose to be better than the potential beast within. We are better men because we make conscious choices to be the best we can be instead of taking the easy path of choosing to have all the pleasure we can take, regardless of the pain and damage caused.

Your poetry, your pain ennobles us. It helps us to be the men we should be by showing so clearly the horrible damage caused and pain inflicted by being like your father.

Thank you. For all us us I thank you.

The pictures are really engaging, ss with most books illustrated by Garth Williams.
The book counts from 1 to 10, so is suitable for the younger child/toddler. The rhymes for each number are really sweet.

I was cautious at first, but this book is such a treasure! Great teaching aide, made easy for children to learn. Adorable illustrations.
My one and a half yr. old loves it. This is the best counting book!!!

I love this book - so does my little one. It was my favorite as a child and when I saw it in a store, I didn't even think about it. I just grabbed it and ran! It does an excellent job of teaching little ones their numbers and number recognition. It also has them count each thing that appears in the illustrations. The pictures are just darling and very life-like as well. You have to buy this book - it's really that good.

This book is wonderful! The pictures are very colorful and peaceful to look at. Just as important, the flow and rhythm of the book is amazingly catching. I have had the entire book memorized for years, and that is without even trying.

I loved the book at 5, and I still love it at 27. I had this book as a kid, and I give it to all my friends who have children.

If you know someone who is learning to count, or someone who is a child at heart, this is the perfect book for them!

My dad read this book to my sister and I when we were small. We loved it more than any other book out there! The rhymes and illustrations were superior. We all still remember each and every number and group of animals associated with the number. My sister has given this book as a baby gift for years, and now that she is having a baby of her own, she is planning on having the nursery designed with the adorable animals! It is a must read and really helps little kids enjoy both math and reading throughout life!!!

It is great to have a look into Mao's China from the eyes of a child. I agree with many of the good things said, and just want to say this is a great book. Lyric, and a child's view, and great insight.

It's one thing to read the history of China's Cultural Revolution, quite another to see it through the eyes of a little girl who lived through it. In "Little Green," Chun Yu, born the year the Cultural Revolution began (1966), chronicles the first ten years of her life, from the revolution's inception to its ending with Mao's death.

What's startling about "Little Green" - the title comes from Yu's childhood nickname - is not just the vivid clarity of her memories but the beauty of her words. Written in verse, the book has the crystalline luminosity of Peter Matthiessen's prose and David Whyte's poetry. On one page Yu will speak eloquently of the gift of a blue silk ribbon; on another she'll share her pain - without being overly sentimental - at having her family's garden torn out after the state decided that private gardens were capitalistic.

"After a whole spring and early summer
of planting and watering,
the tomatoes were just starting to ripen under the green leaves.
Some melon flowers were still blooming on the fence.
The biggest melons had grown to the size of my little fists.
The sunflowers along the roadside
were only a couple of feet tall,
with tender yellow flowers following the sun around.
Nainai [Grandma] sighed.
'It hurts the conscience to destroy these crops.
What crime did the plants commit?' "

In this slender volume, Yu shows how her family is affected by the Cultural Revolution. Her mother, a teacher, becomes a target of the anti-intellectual movement; her father is sent for several years to a reeducation camp. In "We Saw Baba Only Twice a Year," Yu writes:

"Baba lived in May Seventh Cadre School,
where he was being reeducated.
The cadre school could only be reached by boat,
slowly moved by a long bamboo stick.
It took a whole day each way.
We saw Baba only twice a year,
in the summertime
and Chinese New Year.
After not seeing him for a long time,
it felt so strange to call him 'Baba' again."

The cover quote, from Maxine Hong Kingston, calls "Little Green" a "miracle" which initially sounded a bit over the top. But as I read the book and learned Yu's story, I didn't find this to be an exaggeration. For someone who learned English as an adult and spent much of her time in this country studying science, "Little Green," written with elegant simplicity in English, truly is miraculous.

I found "Little Green" so enjoyable that I began rationing it, reading just a few pages a night, to make it last. Thankfully, this is the first book of a trilogy, and Yu says she's already finished the second volume. I'll eagerly await its publication. Until then, I'll return often to Little Green's clear, bright lines.

Little Green is a wondrous work of art, like an ancient Chinese painting brought forward into modern time. Where a Western painter might fill up the entire canvas with paint, traditional Chinese painters used sparse brush strokes to vividly illuminate the very essence of their subject. So does Chun Yu use her poetry to bring to life the world of a ten year old child in the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Like the unfolding of a Chinese scroll, to read her verse is to journey across the landscape of that time. We see her family, other children, revolutionaries and "counter-revolutionaries," political struggle meetings, war trainings, cold streams, warm meals, forbidden ancient poetry, and the sound of snowflakes falling past her ear.

Little Green is suitable for all ages, both children and adults. From her readings in the San Francisco bay area, I also learned that this book is the first in a coming trilogy. I give it five stars.

This book powerfully tells what life was truly like under Mao and his cohort. Chun Yu brings a new voice with an amazing ability to enable the reader to imagine life inside China during the Cultural Revolution.

This is a fresh and new voice to the history of that era.

PS I am not a kid although submitting a review as a child is easier as there is no password stuff to climb through.

Chun Yu's "Little Green" is a great corrective to much of the highly effective propaganda that emanated from China during Mao Tse-Dong's Cultural Revolution. Chun Yu has achieved this with a unique voice and with a unique literary form that is unusually poetic and that is not in itself a propaganda piece.

I believe that "Little Green" should be classified as suitable for all ages. While children will undoubtedly enjoy and learn from "Little Green," I think it ought more properly to be included with literature also intended for adults.

Just buy it. These old childrens books are far better than a lot of the modern stuff out there.

I really loved this book when I was little, and here it is, 30+ years later, and I am seeking it out as a gift :)

I think the things that I truly loved about it was how there was a little spider (I think?) that was hidden on every page. It gave me a stronger focus on viewing the detailed pages. I also liked the fact that it didn't seem like a "baby book" to me, even when I was barely able to read ;)

my favorite book as a kid & now i read my old
copy to my son!

I bought this book after trying to no avail to find it at my parent's home. It was my FAVORITE book when I was a child. It was equally difficult to find since I no longer had the name of the book or who the author was. However, after multiple searches, and finally figuring out who the author was, I found it! What a treasure. Now I can read it to my daughter, 100,000 times. She is 2-1/2 and enjoys the book as well. The illustrations are fun and lively, and the rhymes are sweet (well, as sweet as possible when you are talking about a book on monsters!)

We recommend this book!

I recently was asked the question,"What's your favorite children's book?" on a survey. This was an obvious choice for me. I can still recite most of the monster's rhymes by heart 20 years later. I bought Mercer Mayer's new Professor Wormbog book for my niece a few month's back because it has all of the same characters.

This is a great selection of poetry and has high interest for kids. My 5th graders love it as well as my younger children!

A great book of poems--my four year old daughter loves them, and they are great short alternative to a "book" when it is late at night!

I've been reading this with our son a few nights a week and working on memorizing some of the poems. They are fun and they vary a good deal in complexity so it is easy to find poems at the right level for him.

This is a really cute book full of great poems for children. Some of them are written for just fun, but others evoke great imagery and thus great discussion with children. We really enjoy this book.

My toddler son and I are so pleased with this book. We discovered this treasure at our local library and just had to add it to our personal collection. The Llama Who Had No Pajama is a perfect way to introduce poetry prose into your little one's life. I could only locate the book in paperback and would prefer to have it in hardback, but apparently it is no longer published as such. This and Where the Sidewalk Ends are essential items for your child(ren)'s home library.

Long Life: Essays And Other Writings showcases the prose and poetry of Mary Oliver who has won both a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award for her work. A master wordsmith, Mary Oliver has authored more than twenty books, and in Long Life shows herself adept at the art of the essay as well as a gifted poet whose lyrical commentaries range from describing a goosefish stranded at low tide to being baptized by the mist from a whale's blowhole. Long Life is highly recommended, emotionally resonating, cognitively gifted reading and a welcome addition to personal and academic library literary collections.

Reading this is like peeking into Mary Oliver's Journal in which she has recorded thoughts about poems and poets, art and artists, and all the secrets and truths they share.

I am a Mary Oliver fan. I love her poetry combining spirit and nature, and I can understand it. I certainly agree that writing should come from the heart; however, if it is to be published, the authors should sometimes provide a map to navigate the terrain. Not Mary Oliver. In these essays and poems, Oliver shares with us how the world calls to her and invites us to greet our world as she does hers. I particularly love:

"People say to me: wouldn't you like to see Yosemite? The Bay of Fundy? The Brooks Range? I smile and answer, 'Oh yes' sometime. And go off to my woods, my ponds, my sun-filled harbor, no more than a blue comma on the map of the world, but to me, the emblem of everything. It is the intimate, never The general, that is teacherly."
Teacherly. My computer says that is not a word. What does my computer know? I like it. Even her prose is poetic. "Every day my early morning walk along the water grants me a second waking. My feet are nimble, now my ears wake, and give thanks for the ocean's song."

I liked Part Three the least. Her praise of Emerson and Hawthorne were first published as introductions to Modern Library Classics. However, she did tickle my curiosity about Emerson. She has given me enough in her short essay to make me want to read his work now that I am an adult. I think of all the rich material which I was fed in school and only now as a mature adult can appreciate and enjoy.

Oliver does not write, here, about aging or the end of life. She writes in both prose and poetry about how full her life is. And she reminds us that full does not necessarily mean busy. She reminds me that I could live a rich and delicious life right here in my neighborhood. She reminds me that I can receive so much by being conscious. This book stays on my shelf with my other Olivers to pick back up occasionally and savor.

by Judith Helburn
for StorycircleBookReviews
www.storycirclebookreviews.org
reviewing books by, for, and about women

Readers of this book come away knowing that Mary Oliver wakes up each morning,
rushes outside and breathes deeply ready to fill her mind and soul with nature's
surprises of the day. There is a chapter, Dog Talk, that will warm any dog
lover's heart, including a wonderful listing of her dogs' names, past and
present. The language is gorgeous and full of imagery yet sparse.

Oliver's comment on the necessity of literature spoke to its essential place
in my life.
"The best use of literature bends not toward the narrow and the absolute
but to the extravagant and the possible. Answers are no part of it;
rather, it is the opinions, the rhapsodic persuasions, the engrafted
logics, the clues that are to the mind of the reader the possible keys
to his own self-quarrels, his own predicament."

Like a gentle warning, one we will not heed, Mary Oliver states in her foreword that she prefers writing poetry to prose, but each has its own pleasures and manner of expression - "different paces of heartbeat." Anyone who has dabbled in both types of word-art knows how true this is; and we are grateful that Oliver is willing to adjust her heart rhythm so that our appreciative hearts may beat a little differently, too.

"Long Life: Essays and Other Writings" is a slim collection of prose and those few poems Oliver could not resist interspersing, collected into a love letter from Oliver to the universe, "full of radiant suggestion." Whether walking the beach, ten feet from her home, or the town dump, her praise to the beauty of the world is undaunted and lavish. There is no detail she misses, no praise unwarranted, and Oliver relishes what is life, animate, inanimate, human, canine, reptile or insect. In "Flow," she notes how we already live in paradise, and to be fully aware of it is to "have such music in one's head and body," that one must, brimming with blessing and gratitude, ask: "what is the gift I should bring the world?" For Oliver, cleary, her literary art, adding to our paradise in books.

In various essays, none very long, Oliver writes tributes to favored authors Hawthorne and Emerson, but also to her lifelong partner, Molly, in appreciation of their many differences and habits, making relationships that much richer and more rewarding. She writes of perfect days, and surely all are, in their own way. She writes of childhood huts, little places she built with open doors, so that she might sit inside and watch the wonder of the world around her (I did exactly the same). There is no place where she is unable to find beauty, and whereas Poe claimed to be able to hear the night falling, Oliver listens for the morning as it "settles upward." In her series of poems called "Sand Dabs," she collects pithy and wise sayings, the sort one would scribble on a napkin corner and keep in a wallet so as not to forget. And, even while she strives to appreciate this worldly paradise in open faith, her intellect presses her, "... forgive me, Lord, how I still, sometimes, crave understanding."

Oliver walks in the world to love it. We read her books in order to walk alongside her, love it through her eyes, her words, her spirit "settling upward," and by end of book, bask in the afterglow, recipients of the gift Oliver has given back to the world, to us.

Wonderful voyeuristic thrill of reading other people's lover letters, without the shame or guilt. But even more than that, this book will pull you into the world of the lover and the loved. Makes a great read, and would be an excellent gift. Read it in bed together, just like Carrie and Big did!

Great Book. Well written. History fans will enjoy this book as well. Can't wait until volume 2 is written.

This book is a wonderful collection of deep and inspiring feelings of love and intimacy. There are many beautiful heart warming letters, as well as tragic stories of love gone awry. It's truly astonishing to have a voyeuristic look into the real lives and souls of writers, presidents and explorers we have heard about since childhood. This is not just made up, but real life (and real love), with all its twists and turns. There is an immense range of letters and feelings, all of them enjoyable to read. I love reading a new one every night

I have seen the "Sex and the City" movie several times. This book has all the love letters that Carrie and Big read each other in the movie. It looks to me like the book that Carrie reads in bed. Maybe the book was just inspired by the movie, which came out the same day. Either way, this book is very beautiful and romantic.

I especially enjoyed learning the details of each writer's life. It's amazing how passionate some of our greatest leaders really were. I also love the illustrations, which make me feel like I'm going back in time.

My favorite letter was from John Keats, who (I learned from reading the book) died from consumption at the tender age of 26. While separated from his true love in his dying days, he wrote:

"You could not step or move an eyelid but it would shoot to my heart--I am greedy of you--Do not think of any thing but me. Do not live as if I was not existing--Do not forget me--But have I any right to say you forget me? Perhaps you think of me all day.

"Have I any right to wish you to be unhappy for me? You would forgive me for wishing it, if you knew the extreme passion I have that you should love me--and for you to love me as I do you, you must think of no one but me, much less write that sentence. Yesterday and this morning I have been haunted with a sweet vision--

"I have seen you the whole time in your shepherdess dress. How my senses have ached at it! How my heart has been devoted to it! How my eyes have been full of tears at it! Indeed I think a real Love is enough to occupy the widest heart--Your going to town alone, when I heard of it was a shock to me--yet I expected it--promise me you will not for some time, till I get better. Promise me this and fill the paper full of the most endearing names."

Amazing, heartbreaking, wonderful! Have to stop now, and go read it again

Before I read this book, I always had a stereotype about men, that it is not easy for them to express their feelings. This book has reversed my impression. In fact, a man can fluently convey passion to his loved one. Each love letter in this book was like a complex of musical notes, that accelerated the most affectionate feelings when I was reading it. Some letters gave me cheers; and others gave me tears. I would wonder to whom each love letter was written, and what's their love story? In this book, the author gives the circumstance, an explicit background to satisfy those wonders. It is so well written that I am not only recommending it to men, but also to women. No matter how strongly we desire to be loved, we will not fulfill it unless we believe there can be someone who loves us so endlessly and unconditionally. This book gives me that assurance. Fabulous book to read.

Author Curtis Cole has a unique ability to capture a moment, a thought, or a life event into a poem. His expression gives not only a clear visual experience of the event to the reader, but also manages to stir up emotions in such a way as to create a very real experience. When you're finished reading, you'll feel like you lived the moment he describes just as if it had actually happened to you.

Great stuff.

Rarely can you find such a treasure as this. Written with a sense of life knowledge rarely seen in someone so youthful as Cole, this old soul shows through from prose to prose. I find myself reaching for it rather often as it is a companion to my daily reflection. Not only a must buy, but a must read.

The works by Mr. Cole are a Ray of Light in a negitive world. I highly recommed this book to anyone who loves poety. Bravo!!

mr. Coles beautiful words have made me laugh cry and learn to love all over. thank you to him for this wonderful peice of american literature. I look forward to his next book and to re-reading this one again. highly recommended!!!!

I love to read poetry, and Curtis Cole's expressions in this book touched my heart in many ways. His creative verse is amazing. I highly recommend this book to all.

Fearlessly written in a voice that sparks curiosity and leads readers down the path of metaphoric discovery, this book is unique and energetic. The poems within are edgy and original. This is truly a daring, one-of-a-kind effort, angry at times, yet exhibiting almost childlike innocence and inquiry at others. There is something strangely familiar, and almost scarily honest, in this.

Perhaps the hardest feat of any good writer is telling the truth. This book - every single piece - does just that. And it's not complicated or arbitrary. If you've ever felt like you don't really understand poetry, then take a look at this little book. The light bulb will go off. It's not that it's poetry for beginners; it's just that it represents how clear, lyrical and unambiguous good poems can be. There's a kind of magical focus to it. Everything seems just so, but still real and breathing. None of it ever feels contrived.

What a wonderful mind, I thought. How curious and thoughtful and full of life.

Wow. In the first eighteen pages she took me from laughing out loud to having tears roll down my face. Bravo Ada!

excellent work. i had become prejudiced against contemporary poetry until i read Lucky Wreck. it opened the door for me and assured me that there is such thing as imagination in the 21st century. this work bridged a gap that i didn't realize existed between poetry and music.

Lucky me, Ms. Limon agrees to write her soul upon a page for me to read. Lucky me, I have had the opportunity to hear the author read her work. Lucky me, her poetry has invaded me. Lucky me, poetry is young, fresh and alive within Ada Limon. Lucky you for buying lucky wreck.