Poetry Books

I love reading poetry books and this was just a darling little thing that kept me horrified and freaked out and falling in love with the human spirit all over again. Reminds me a lot of Jim Morrison's work.

Well I use to hate poetry. I remember back in highschool when they made us read Shakeaspeare and Lord Byron in English class. I hated it I couldn't understand it at all, and my teacher she gushed over Shakeaspeare, acted like he was a god. Well I refused to read a poem after I got out of college. So I have been dating this girl and guess what she's a teacher, she kept telling me about this book of poetry that she just loves and well it has been our only real disagreement. So finally I gave in, yeah women can be persuasive. I read her copy of this book and I was astounded, I couldn't believe that I had been refusing to read this stuff for years. Then I came to my senses and decided that this guy was alone and everything else was like Shakespeare, well I was wrong I picked up a copy of one of Saul Williams books and was just as astounded. But hey if you really want a fresh look at poetry, life, and all just read this guy. Now I need to go so I can order my copy of this book, my girlfriend has been insisting I give her's back. I especially loved the one on page 133.

After years of dedicated searching under the tutelage of my uncle who thrives on unknown poets, I found a wonderful poet before he did; Rik Woods with "This Little Red Bitch in My Chest" has assembled a new authoritative guide to life, survival, and modern poetry for the whole of society. I usually tend toward Australian poets like Banjo Patterson and Tim Thorne, but last summer I was in New York City to visit a mate. We were walking down the road a came across a bookseller and I were astonished by the title and just snatched it without even looking really. Well I stashed it in my gear and didn't look at it until I got back. Well I love this book; the bloke is just marvellous with one-liners every so often. Well this is definitely a book for the Joe Bloggs.

I couldn't put it down. The words swayed me into times and places of past, present, and future. Images cursed through mind of mad men and sultry lusts, dripping with sweetness and innocence. Some poems made me want to put my hand over my eyes like a child watching a scary movie, but still always peeking through the fanning of the fingers. I have tried to put the book down, and like an obsession, I keep reading, one more poem, one more poem. Wonderfully written, experience laden, and an emotional rollercoaster. Thank you for sharing, the world needs more.

This Little Red Bitch In My Chest (2004.) A collection of poems covering the heavy and the distraught the edge and the inner soul.

INTRODUCTION: (I discovered most of the following from Rik Woods' Yahoo 360 and Myspace.com sites.)
Rik Woods isn't some academia poet that lives under publish or perish. For decades, Rik Woods has been writing and building a following of people he knows without ever being published. Read on for my review on this new and exciting poet.

OVERVIEW:
This book is essential a wandering through a life, at least that is how it seems to me. A life lived and struggled through. But I wonder if he can sustain this kind of writing or will it run out before he can make a real impact on the world of poetry, notably the hardest writing market to succeed in.

REVIEW:
I hate writing reviews and you can see I have never posted one on Amazon before, but after watching this book for several years and ordering a few for friends and seeing great reviews but none that really highlighted what this poet can do. So I am going to take the time to make a few points out of the book.




Only the good die young
Excerpt: Just as sweet death comes to claim me
That damn machine brings me back
Have you ever dreamed on life support?

COMMENTS: Okay so this poem might irritate some people right off as it is about euthanasia, I can't really say from reading the book where the poet stands on this subject or any others for that matter. But the character in the poem is definetly pro-euthanasia, as you see the struggle his body is going through just to survive you kinda wish he would die.

The hand that hurts
Excerpt: My father was not a man of great acclaim, yet
He is mine to claim
COMMENTS: Okay so this one after you read it is clearly about child abuse, but asfter you get through it and reread it you realize that from the child's point of view only knowing that abuse, he stil loves his father.

Reproduction
Excerpt: As I stand here in the cold ass rain
The fear of loneliness gripping me
For the thousandth time this day
COMMENTS: When I first read this one I was kinda at a loss, I thought it was just a person depressed over not having children. But now I wonder if maybe there was and it was aborted or miscarried. I don't know like all poetry I think each person has to take their own away from it, and I think this short simple poem is a prime example.

A whole lot of nothing
excerpt: and a whole lot of nothing is what I will leave the
sons and daughters that will never be born
COMMENTS: Again one that evokes that feeling of longing. Sometimes you wish that when you turn the page there would be a happy poem, and I guess occasionally that does happen, but when you read ones like this you just want to cry.

Stuck
excerpt: Have you ever felt like a cigarette butt in the bottom
Of a half empty beer bottle
Unsure if it's stale beer or urine
COMMENTS: Okay so this one is just great in my book, those first three lines sum up what we have all felt in life at some point, but could really never put out finger on how to say just how crappy life felt at that time. If those three lines don't make you say "yeah" and laugh at how hard life really is then I don't know what will.

If I Fall Down on My Way to Heaven
excerpt: And now I'm so tired I lay me down to die
And if I should go to heaven instead of oblivion
I give my soul for Elvis to take
COMMENTS: Where the hell does a person come up with lines like these? I mean it is great to see that a person can take something in life that has become mundane like mentioning Elvis and turn it into something that makes you do a double take and say what! This is another of those that you will have to really take your own from it.

Sexual innuendo
excerpt: I reach for you and find your thighs wet
Come here, baby, kiss the king tonight
COMMENTS: To put it simply, this poem is erotic without being just porn as you so often see in erotic poetry. It appears to be a sweet memory from the past that a person relives. It is sweet is so many ways which is probably why it ended up in a chapter titled "Sweetheart"

OVERALL:
Overall, it's a good collection. If you don't want to spend the money to get this book believe me if you like poetry and reading poetry it will be your loss? I have spent a lot of money on poetry and I tell you this is one book I have not minded buying 4 times now, and three friends have agreed with me on this poet's work. I do not hesitate to say that often it left me in tears. When a writer (poet or novelist) can do that to a person you know you have hit upon a wonderful and insightful artist.

In Lise Goett's musically eloquent book, Waiting for the Paraclete, the human heart, her heart, beats in celebration of the spirit in its nakedness. Hers is a spirit that has seen and is seen. Hers is a heart that joyfully and painfully knows. Goett, in her honesty reveals herself in "Rescuers," "The honor of saving/is that the rescued kneels down/and puts his head/inside the jaws of the rescuer,/dying to all else except what the heart knows." Waiting for the Paraclete is a privelage for the human race.

This prize-winning first collection by Lise Goett is a treasure house of alchemical language that like her Eurydice who knows "too well/that no one resurrects you save yourself" manages, through layer upon layer of rich complexity, to bring the reader to epiphanies of insight and pleasure. I found myself savoring these poems' gleaned surfaces for their wizardly blending of the abstract and visceral, for how magically the concrete becomes incandescent. In "Antediluvian", a butcher whose hands "raw from the slaughter" suggests "There is nothing we would not kill with our appetites" also gives the speaker "white packages [...]of a sacrement." Rituals of sacrifice recur throughout the poems in this book, whether in a mother's hard earned tuition for school which becomes the bet for a better life when her beau loses his wealth on a racing horse and shoots himself, or the enactment of Gary Gilmore's execution in "Blood Atonement" or the lyrical recollections of failures of love (romantic or familial), the poems enact an incantation for surviviing what seems to defy survivial. The speaker tells us in "Rescuers", "[...]perhaps the heart strips itself/and goes down,/shedding its various selves/to fathom the nature of drowning:"

The stunning immediacy of so many of the images in WAITING FOR THE PARACLETE, imbues the detail with such particularity that, like the body itself, it acts as ballast and conduit for our deepest yearnings against the world's cruelties. Poems like "Of the Comb" and "Labyrinth" transform the violence of loss into a hymn of martyrdom. I found myself thinking of the biblical saints, St. Francis in particular, and of the tenuous journey that is the gamble for redemption in a fallen world. Like the speaker in "Swimming with Eels", "the covenant" that resonates in so much of this book is poetry's ability to leave us with the "glistening" of what otherwise has us living within a "circle of dread".

"It is beginning to snow," writes Lise Goett in her poem The Rescuers, "as it does in the dreams of the unhearing, /and you keep on walking." Then, in Numen: "I went out past the borders of town / and lay down with the silence of tractors."

It is good to be writing this, late October on the verge of All Soul's Day-Day of the Dead in Mexico-on the verge of snow. For Lise Goett's new (and prize-winning) book of poems, "Waiting For the Paraclete" is a welcome to this verge: the edge of summer and winter, life and death, desire and consummation, flesh/ spirit, the cliff, altar, kiss, the calling. So open the cover as you would open a door-the French doors of Paris, the icy meat-room of a butcher, the catalfaque of St. Catherine, a blind boy's empty socket, the gap between silence and speech. Open your own yearning and enter its cathedral, for you have come to a sacrament.

"It is hard to begin with a death," begins the book's first poem..."of what you thought would be your future." And what the future gives us, in this flow of canticles, is a river
whose course is sure, whose shape is as unfathomable as "islands bandaged in fog," whose attraction is total, often brutal, beautiful, fatal-and incarnational. The voice that beckons us is at once particular, contemporary ("...a rhapsody of movement along the Boule Mich / past the skewered meats of the Greek tavernas"...."Some fat guy from Nebraska wants to know the rest of the story." ..."your father fondling uncut cigars at the Petroleum Club"...a retarded child "tooling down the edge of the interstate / on a tricycle") and as archetypal as the soul's own memory ("All passion tastes of relinquishment./ The world is slipping away. / You who knew this music before light have begun to hear /...and even this music will continue without you,/ those tiny white lights strung through the treetops / taken down at the end of the holiday, intensifying your love.").

Lines-and music-like this are the gorgeous underpinning of Goett's alchemical structure. And they call, as the Sirens called Odysseus, with compelling power throughout her incantational collection. I'm tempted here to simply start reprinting verses-lines of atmospheric light, "election by fire," of water, black lingerie, of the beast (and breast) shaking in its harness; to draw more maps of this songline's own cartography. But that would be injustice; I can't show you the fish by holding up its parts.

Lise introduces her collection with a quote from Carlos Drummond de Andrade: "Save all of yourself for the wedding though / nobody knows when or if it will come." So, too, I'll save the whole of "Waiting For the Paraclete" for you. After all, who is the paraclete?

Goett uses words to lead, to touch, and to surround you with your world, revealing the corners that are familiar yet unexplored. Her words are magic, conjuring and revealing. I was drawn to sit and ponder life as seen through this wonderful poet. More a fiction reader, I was held by the words of these poems and so happy to have come upon this work. A must read - must own book!

I first encountered this brand of incredulity when, many years ago, I really looked long and hard at a painting by Ingres (The Bather). For the life of me, I couldn't figure out how it was done. Was this really paint? Did a brush lay it down? The picture seemed so perfect in matter, in its graceful redemption of the world. This is hard to explain. What I'm trying to say is, the artist didn't appear to have intervened; and here I was, a spectator beholding pure form, emotion flowing directly from the source of life. I am struck by the same sensation in reading this book. In these poems, one recognizes those old partners in time: love, death, despair, the absurd, and the divine, and one is astonished and even terrified at rediscovering all these bright and dark spots of our mortality. I love the way Goett gives little plots to the emotions. She tells me about what I know and don't know but most of all she fashions the astonishing uncommon substance of life and combines it with the unexpectedly common stuff of it, too--the earthy and unearthly--so that the reader is suddenly made aware of them both at the same time.

Poetry of superlative quality is exactly what "You Beckon," by Author Peggy Eldridge-Love represents. Ms. Eldridge-Love is definitely a talented writer. Each of Ms. Eldridge-Love's poems allowed me to feel the words, which were inspiring, soothing and thought-provoking. This author without a doubt is gifted with evoking emotion. "You Beckon" is a breathtaking collection of poetry that I highly recommend.

I feel fortunate to have been recently introduced to the poetry of Peggy Eldridge-Love. Her work does not provide easy, comfortable reading, but rather familar places, people and memories that figuratively beckon the reader to take a closer look at the tender ache that may wait beneath the surface of the ordinary. Through Eldridge's artistry, common contemporary scenes and themes of our shared recent history take on a new dimension. Her collection is filled with timeless peices that you'll want to read and read again.

M. LaVora Perry,
Author of "Taneesha's Treasures of the Heart"

Ms. Peggy Eldridge-Love's lyrical masterpiece "You Beckon" is a witty, passionate creation that can hold its own among the Angelou's and Giovanni's. Taking everyday emotions and situations Peggy breathes life into the art of poetry with wisdom and beauty, speaking on subjects everyone from all walks of life can relate to. With a unique spin on the ordinary she shares her life's lessons in a "bare all" fashion, allowing readers a look at the woman within the writer.

" You Beckon" By Peggy Eldridge Love, is a collection of voices: A young girl, an old man, a worried wife, a soldier, a cosmopolitan and a lover as well as many others. All within the pages of this fine collection of poetry Eldridge Love handles many characters and gives them clarity and dignity that is rare in voices.
The poems work because the reader can connect with them and relate, living vicariously through their losses and victories.
The majority of Eldrdge Love poems succeed because they evoke a satisfying emotional response. It is one thing to write a well crafted poem that follows the rules of poetry, another to make a poem that touches the soul.
from " Repertoire"
I gave up wanting long ago
Believing that i bargained away
all hope of arms that might hold
eyes that could see
ears that wanted to hear
the repertoire of my soul.
Eldridge Love's poems are direct enough to draw the reader in. Complicated enough to hold the their interest. Love sports a fiskle intellect. But she doesn't put herself on a pedestal. She wants you to come into her world of words, which are often deep, always provocative and razor sharp in their brevity. Her family poem's " My Father" are snap shots of a Black girls life in Kansas who describes herself as a "hick", but don't be fooled by Eldridge Love's modesty. These poems are the documentation of a creative force at work.

Erren.G.Kelly

Being a poet at heart I must highly recommend You Beckon by Peggy Eldridge-Love. They say poetry is subjective but I beg to differ, "First Fruits: A Wedding Lullaby," "Cold Fever," "Wall Flower" and "Go" (a simple yet urgent plea) just to name a few herald the love and appreciation of this collection. Peggy has a sweet way with words that carress you as you read like waves on an ocean vacation. I love the memories as if they were my own. I look forward to reading additional volumes of poetry from this wordsmith. You've gotta get a copy. This is a must for every collection.

Roy J. Cook compiled his popular anthology in 1916, long before the Great Depression, WWII, the Civil Rights Movement, Vietnam, and the collapse of the Soviet Union. Eighty Years of Bestsellers (1895-1975) by Hackett and Burke ranks Roy J. Cook's anthology among the fifty most popular books sold in the U.S. in the past century. One Hundred and One Famous Poems (or alternatively, 101 Famous Poems) has remained continuously in print.

Why is 101 Famous Poems still popular today? Cook's compilation is simply fun to read. Cook did include selections from great poets like Byron, Dickinson, Keats, Milton, Shakespeare, Shelley, Tennyson, Whitman, and Wordsworth. There are also popular poems by Frost, Kipling, Longfellow, Poe, Riley, and Whittier. However, what makes Cook's anthology special is that we find those lesser poems that we often memorized as a child and still find enjoyable years later.

I did not immediately recognize Lieut. Col. John McCrae, Henry Holcomb Bennett, Edmund Vance Cook, George Washington Doane, Eugene Field, Sam Walter Foss, William Ernest Henley, Mary Howitt, Sergeant Joyce Kilmer, Winifred M. Letts, Clement Clarke Moore, Thomas Buchanan Read, and Ella Wheeler Wilcox.

And yet, many of their poems proved not to be strangers: But let me live by the side of the road and be a friend of man - We shall not sleep though poppies grow in Flanders Field - A poem as lovely as a tree - Laugh and the world laughs with you - I am the captain of my soul - Will you walk into my parlor?, said the spider to the fly - and, of course, The Night Before Christmas. I was happy to find one of my old favorites, The Duel, a fascinating paradox by Eugene Field.

I don't really keep my old edition with its yellowing pages and old fashioned oval portraits next to my bed for nightly reading. Our family does not actually read the poems aloud before the fireplace after the evening meal. But through the years I do occasionally find myself reading once again all 101 poems, rediscovering poets and poetry that I have nearly forgotten. You won't be disappointed with Roy J. Cook's compilation.

One Hundred and One Famous Poems is a really good poetry book. I don't usually like poems that much, let alone reading, but I found at least 27 poems I liked. Some of the poems I really enjoyed were Whitman's "O" Captain my Captain, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's The Builders, Eugene Field's The Duel and Edmund Vance Cooke's How did you die?

This book is an easy read and you may discover that you really enjoy poetry if you haven't read much poetry before. I read the book in five days, and that's not easy when you have ADD as bad as I do. The book is only one hundred and ninety-two pages and has large print making it easier to read. I thought the book was similar in some ways to Stephen King's book Night Shift; it's like a bunch of short stories except these are poems although I can't say I have ever read a poem that was six pages long until now.

The poems, the famous words spoken, the documents we once knew from school, from stories, from one another reciting on stage in plays are presented here in this little treasure. I forgot, and wanted to remember and here they are.......all together. But, not only the poets. There is the perfectly written letter to a mother who lost 5 sons in the Civil War from Abraham Lincoln, our American President then. And many other writings in history's place. A must have in everyone's library.

One of my favorite poem books. One of my favorite poems:

Laugh and the world laughs with you Weep, and you weep alone, For the sad old earth must borrow it's mirth But has enough trobles of its own Sing and the hills will answer Sigh, it is lost in the air Echos bound to a joyful sound But shrink from voicing care

you should read it...

hey reynold!

Years ago I read weekly from an elderly woman's poetry book to her and other residents at a nursing home. She and the other residents greatly enjoyed my poetry reading. I particularly relished THIS particular collection of poems because they were ones that I'd long ago heard/read/known. I absolutely "loved" the book.... but ALAS! I never took to memory the book's title, the book's owner died, and the book was packed off with her other things to a distant daughter. Searching through other poetry anthologies would reward me with SOME of those poems, seldom enough of them, and NEVER all of them. I looked through Amazon's poetry listing, hoping against hope. I ordered this book because its table of contents urged me to think MAYBE it would suffice. What a wonderful surprise to receive it and find out that it IS THE SAME WONDERFUL BOOK! (My only disappointment was that the original borrowed and shared copy was hardcover.) Anyway, I've enjoyed re-acquainting myself to what seems an "old and dear friend" in reading and re-reading this book.

I fell in love with this book when I first perused it many years ago at the house of a friend. Whenever I would go over there I would grab it from off the shelf. It was very old, so I never suspected it was still in print. Needless to say, I was thrilled to obtain my own copy, which remains on my bedstand.

I love this book. The poems are great and I can find the poems that Anne says in the movie, "Anne of green Gables" and "Anne of Avonlee" I love the poems. I like These are the Times That try Mens Soals.

My father had an old copy of this book that he read as a child. He loved to read his favorites from this book, or simply recite them from memory. They are classic rhyming poems. Another favorite book of mine is "Poetry for a Lifetime", a beautiful volume which includes a number of these poems, including "Plant a Tree" and "Home". It has a much larger number of poems and is illustrated and has comments from the editor. I highly recommend both books.

I read this book as a child 40 years ago. The poems in this book are timeless classics. I look forward to sharing them with my own children.

This was my Dad's poetry text at college in the thirties. Every Christmas during his life he would read the 'holiday' poems to our family. I have carried on the tradition for my children and grandchildren and each year they await the reading of 'Bairnies Coodle Doon' and 'Jes for Christmas', two wonderful stories that bring forward the lives of children of a hundred years ago. If tradition is important to you and if you want to introduce your family to poetry as America knew it for the first 200 years, this collection if highly recommended.

I bought six of my favorite childhood books for my great-grandson..."Little Black Sambo", "The Three Billy Goats Gruff", "Henny Penny", "Chicken Little", "The Three Little Kittens", and "Classic Tales of Brer Rabbit". My great-grandie is 2-1/2 and I can't wait to read these wonderful stories to him.

Three Little Kittens was my favorite book as a child and now that i have a son of my own I am able to pass on a favorite to him. He loves the vivid images that this book offers, there are so many different pictures in their that at 16 months old he likes to point and hear me say the name of an object.

My three year old daughter loves this book. It has cute illustrations and an easy to follow story line, just like I remember. This is great book for both boys and girls.

The book was in perfect shape and arrived very quickly. A pleasure to do business with.

This is one of the best books for young children. I read it to my daughter as a child and she loved it.

I first read this book 4 years ago and keep it on my bedside table, having marked important pages over and over again. I have read the greats: from Augustine and Aquinas to T.Merton, C.S. Lewis and Chesterton and never before have I seen so many truths written so simply and yet elegantly. It is Biblicly based and is apropos for giving Christians of any age comfort and help in living in today's world.

I was amazed when my twin sister gave me this book which belonged to my mom over 45 years ago. In the book was her own higlighted parts that she found worth marking. Well I sort of gave up on religion and organized religion due to various personal reasons. I began reading the book about 2 months ago. It is only 127 pages long. It has literally changed my life and brought me back to a realtionship with our heavenly Father. It is simple to read and I promise you will not be dissapointed if you purchase this book. I have now bought 4 used versions for friends of mine and they absolutely have agreed with me on its simplicity to read and apply the teachings within the book. Please read it and may you get blessed as I have from the words within the book.

Sincerely,

Dr. Richard D. Golden

Believe it or not, I bought this book back in the early 1970's and have just now gotten around to reading it. It contains an amazing insight on how to pray to God. It has already changed the way I pray and I feel it will produce fruit in my spiritual life. The book is only 128 pages long, divided into 24 chapters. It is a very smooth read and is easy to put down & pick right back up again. A person could easily read it like a daily devotional if they chose to. Charles Allen truly had an insight and Christian faith that we can all benefit from. (next I plan on reading his autobiography) I highly recommend this book...though written years ago, it is very relevant for any one today.

I first bought this book about 6 years ago when I was really emotional down because.... I am still working on the pratice of praying but it has truly enlightened my outlook of my life and everyday situations that we just make problematic that may not be. I have given away over ten copies or more and will be buying more for gifts to my friends

This is really a must read for those who want to know more about prayers. It is up to the point and clear. I have learned a lot from it. It is also very uplifting.

This is one of the greatest books I have ever read. Only wish I had read it 35 years ago. I now give it to every young couple in my family or who is a friend, who is getting married. It is a perfect guideline for their lives to work together. I even corresponded with the author on how wonderful I thought it was. A must read for all newlyweds. Very touching and moving for the soul.

While on vacation in Florida I picked up an autographed copy and could not put this book down. I cried and I cried, it is just a wonderful yet realistic love story. Real life experiences with a real marriage commitment. I am recommending it to all my friends. I think it is a perfect book to share with anyone who is married and wants to stay married!!!!!!

I picked this book up at the store without really looking closely at it. And let me tell you, I couldn't put it down. Really showed me that what seems like the strongest, most perfect relationship, has it's ups and downs, and that you can survive...if you're willing to try! I am recommending this book to all my friends!

I started reading and could not put it down. Having gone through some recent trials in my own marriage, it showed me that marriages are more alike than they are different. It is NORMAL to feel overwhelmed with motherhood. In the end, will love truly win out? Commitment of both partners is the key. This is such a tender presentation of the ups and downs of married life. I found tears streaming down my face many times. Hit very close to home! Enjoy ... good couple reading. I'm going to read it again with my husband.

Recently I was a guest on a Christian talk show with Michael Adamse. The show was entitled, "Emotional Blackmail". I was quite taken with Dr. Adamse's views on the subject matter we were there to talk about. His sensitivity really stunned me. At the end of the show we traded our books and said our good-bye's. I dashed to the airport looking forward to getting some very much needed rest on the plane trip home. That never happened. I made the mistake of opening his book. I devoured it, finishing it just minutes before the plane landed. It's a beautifully written story that makes one really think. I found myself wondering if I had read this book 20 years ago... would I still be married to the same man? I was in awe of Dr. Adamse as a person and now, after reading this wonderful story, I am in awe of his writing talent as well. I still find it remarkable how effortlessly he translates his sensitivity to paper. It's a touching story. It should be mandatory reading for everyone entering a marriage.

This book plays with reality, is beautiful, is provocative (in certain ways), and encourages revisits.

So different, so wonderful, so thought-provoking. This book of photographs is amazing. Each photo tells a story, or many stories, or creates an emotion that's hard to pin down. This is a large bound book, of high quality. I'm astounded at the price. This is truly a book to keep for life. I took it to work, and people lined up to look at it, one co-worker offered to buy it from me for $10 more than I paid for it :) (no way!)

Recently on PBS, I saw a small clip of the collaboration work of the photographer (who is also the subject in the photographs) and his painter wife. The artistic creation of staging and dark room manipulations were something no one produces but these two. Results are reminiscent of a strange dream or turn of the century photography of catastrophic Earth events. I had to find a book of their work. The first books I found were $300. but fortunately found a much better priced one. I not only wanted it for myself and friends, but also to hand it down to one of my grandkids. Thank you Mr/Mrs. ParkHarrison for your unusual vision and I hope to see your future productions.

This is one of the weirdest photography books I have ever read...and enjoyed looking!

The author drives the reader through an interesting dream-like world created meticulously just for the shots in this book.

All these stupendous images generate lots of meditations and new ideas not only related to the topic of photography but to the way we experience life.

Wow. That's how I'm going to start this off. My first inkling was to give the book four stars, you know, seem objective to the reader, maybe have a bigger influence. The truth is objectivity has nothing to do with this book. It is full of magic, suprise, wonder: nothing but true subjectivity. That is where its beauty lies, like a receiving a small bit of mail from an unknown sender, each page is a tale for you to tell, as well as ParkeHarrison. By far my favorite photography book, second only to Rocky Schenk, Photographs. Highly Recommended, also beautifully bound and LARGE. Take it from this poor college student, well worth the money.

The DVD itself is technically a little wanting -- the recordings of the poet reading clearly come from a variety of different events and are patched together with varying levels of care. However, the poems are beautiful and it is a joy to hear Oliver's voice speaking them.

Listening to Mary Oliver read her own poetry is a joyful, serene experience. "Wild Geese" is one poem that I could hear several times each day. I am grounded by listening to Mary Oliver.

A wonderful collection from a wonderful career - and hopefully there are many more collections to come.
Sound quality is generally extremely good, 'though one or two tracks seem to be down on level, but hearing the poet read her own work gives the listener/reader that added benefit.
Essential listening.

Mary Oliver is a Pulitzer Prize winning poet. Non-dogmatic spirituality quietly grabs you through her Zen awareness of the here and now. In and of themselves, her poems are passionate. Having her read them aloud is an extra bonus. This is a great collection to listen to when stuck in a traffic jam or when settling down at night for a peaceful sleep. Mary Oliver reading Mary Oliver. It's like pie a la mode!

Mary Oliver is certainly one of our finest contemporary poets. Her terse and sparse use of language in effect widens our horizons as we readers are able to expand our vision through her creative work.
This CD has ample examples of her poetry, from several different volumes, and the listener can accompany the readings with personal copies of the published works. Oliver's ability to use the natural settings of her New England environment to state something profound about the human condition is one of her gifts. To see in the ordinary what is unforgettable, is another. Her language is visual, so that we see what she describes in new ways. This collection of poems, read by the poet, is a classic and one to be treasured and listened to over and over.