Pitt Reviews

Refuge (Pitt Poetry Series)

Published in Paperback by University of Pittsburgh Press (1990-11-20)

Author: Belle Waring

List price: $14.00

New price: $5.00
Used price: $4.75
Collectible price: $35.00

Average review score:

Poems Like Fresh Jazz

Helpful Votes: 0 out of 0 total.
Review Date: 1997-06-06

Reading Belle Waring's "Refuge" is like listening to jazz singer Rickie Lee Jones.

While taking unflinching looks at the reality around them, both artists run through ranges of expression from traditional love lyrics to Mack-the-Knife hipness; from torch songs to modern jazz experiments. Both use elements of bebop, beat poetry, funk, and the next new thing out on the street that is just beginning to work its way into the frontal lobe of popular culture. Both draw us into their experiences of abuse, love, hate, compassion, loneliness, despair, and joy through fresh imagery composed from profound personal insight. Their rhythms and moods compel us to listen to the next lyric, and the next, and the next, until unexpectedly the last phrase sounds and fades, leaving our heads still nodding in agreement, and leaving us with a difficult choice:
Do we go back and listen again? Or do we simply sink back, satiated?

Dan Everman

I loved this book. Thank you for your customer reviews.

Helpful Votes: 1 out of 1 total.
Review Date: 1997-07-03

I love the written word but sometimes find it difficult to express myself. Of this book, I will just use a quote from the author to describe what I experienced reading these poems. "Listen--I'm not romantic, baby, but I do know grace when I see it."

Poems Like Fresh Jazz

Helpful Votes: 1 out of 1 total.
Review Date: 1997-06-06

Reading Belle Waring's "Refuge" is like listening to jazz singer Rickie Lee Jones.

While taking unflinching looks at the reality around them, both artists run through ranges of expression from traditional love lyrics to Mack-the-Knife hipness; from torch songs to modern jazz experiments. Both use elements of bebop, beat poetry, funk, and the next new thing out on the street that is just beginning to work its way into the frontal lobe of popular culture. Both draw us into their experiences of abuse, love, hate, compassion, loneliness, despair, and joy through fresh imagery composed from profound personal insight. Their rhythms and moods compel us to listen to the next lyric, and the next, and the next, until unexpectedly the last phrase sounds and fades, leaving our heads still nodding in agreement, and leaving us with a difficult choice:
Do we go back and listen again? Or do we simply sink back, satiated?

Dan Everman

Skid (Pitt Poetry Series)

Published in Paperback by University of Pittsburgh Press (2002-01-31)

Author: Dean Young

List price: $14.00

New price: $8.20
Used price: $6.99

Average review score:

unfaltering tangibility

Helpful Votes: 2 out of 5 total.
Review Date: 2003-05-18

Dean's "First Course in Turbulence" was perhaps the first collection of poetry I have ever enjoyed in entirety. I became a devout follower from the moment my brain first sundered his work; and had the recent privilege to hear Dean read from his new collection, "Skid". With an amazing gift for florid language, Dean still manages to talk about life in a manner that makes his content accessible to a copious amount of readers. What marks "Skid" as unique is perhaps its more personally oriented quality, when compared to previous collections. Dean manages to reveal chunks of his persona along with his commentary on the intricacies of life. Simply said, this is a collection that should adorn your bookshelf.

Unwavering, intelligent humor

Helpful Votes: 4 out of 8 total.
Review Date: 2004-07-06

I love Dean Young. I love Dean Young very much. There are many, many contemporary poets I love, but Young's poetry has, I don't know, more OOMPH (is that the correct spelling? I hope you know what I mean). But this OOMPH, this power is not lacking in the poetry of other contemporary poets, it is just more natural with Dean Young. My copy of Skid is worn to a point of obscenity. I feel so guilty that I have turned something so beautiful into a dog-eared mess, but isn't great art here for consumption?

Poetry readers of all levels (and even those readers with more nichey interests) will thoroughly enjoy Young. The poems in Skid are sometimes tragic in their humor that sometimes bordelines on the inappropriate (but in a good way!), and sometimes the poems are quite simple and engulfed by the heart and musings of a true twentieth-century poet.

Read Dean Young, and I am sure this nonsensical review will begin to make sense.

Humorous Comfort

Helpful Votes: 6 out of 8 total.
Review Date: 2002-11-04

I have taken this off the shelf to read it regularly. Also, though I'm a dire cheapskate who usually reads library copies (of new poetry), I will be buying this. This is a good one to read aloud to whoever's driving the car, to read when one has the flu for a little comfort, to e-mail to people to cheer them up. A good title: "Howl Upone Eskaping, I Learne Mey Vehikle Is Not Sea-Worthie & Upone Mey Tragik Recapture & Longe Internmynt During Whyche I Wrighte These Words Thorough a Secret System Infolfing Mey Owne Blood". An excerpt from that poem: "In the bathroom was a book of poems by (Blank Blank) about how sad and exquisite/and made of goopy lace everything was/ I hated those poems. Even a regular burrito,/no guacamole, was more full of life/than those poems yet each time his school/met mine, they won, walking away...I was just like you until I was alone/then I was a cherry blossom." And in "Whale Watch": Just because a thing can never be finished/doesn't mean it can't be done./The most vibrant forms are emergent forms./In winter, walk across the frozen lake/and listen to it boom and you will know/something of what I mean. It may be necessary to go to Mexico." Reading the entire book, one will see what these brief excerpts don't capture: what nicely accrues after two-four pages of humorous leaps, Zeppo, lobsters and so on, with a human message, always, as the locus.(If you like Caroline Knox, Mary Ruefle (why, she wrote the poem "A Poem by Dean Young"), Tom Andrews, etc., you will enjoy this, I think).

Sure Signs: New and Selected Poems (Pitt Poetry Series)

Published in Hardcover by Univ of Pittsburgh Pr (Txt) (1980-04)

Author: Ted Kooser

List price: $12.95

Used price: $100.00

Average review score:

great collection

Helpful Votes: 14 out of 15 total.
Review Date: 2004-10-06

Ted Kooser is the poet of the common man. He is known as a regionalist, though his poems speak to people from all over the country. And his selected poems show you exactly the skill of this poet. Kooser is the master of the short poem and of the simple poem. He is a pleasure to read. This collection contains such fine poems such as "Selecting a Reader", "Spring Plowing", "A Summer Night", "Carrie", "A Hairnet with Stars" and "Abandoned Farmhouses" (which might be his best poem). I highly recommend this collection.

Sure Signs: New and Selected Poems

Helpful Votes: 2 out of 2 total.
Review Date: 2005-09-06

Ted Kooser is able to take such everyday situations and discribe them in a way that make you melt. Beautiful!

the reason I like poetry

Helpful Votes: 5 out of 5 total.
Review Date: 2006-11-28

I'm 32 and got into poetry late in life, probably because I didn't know what the heck a poem was or how, assuming the poem was even intelligible, it could change your life. But all that changed when I discovered Sure Signs.

What I like about Mr. Kooser's poems is that I can actually understand them. I was suprised to read a poet this readable, a poet who helped me to see the small, beautiful things in life, and, perhaps most of all, drove me to the library where I checked out more volumes of poetry.

What amazed me is how Mr. Kooser can put the profound into very simple words. I can say that after reading these poems, and others like them, I am a better human being than I was before I started reading poetry. This wouldn't be the case if I hadn't found a poet I could finally understand.

Also recommended: The Gospel of Arnie

The Volcano Sequence (Pitt Poetry Series)

Published in Paperback by University of Pittsburgh Press (2002-02-14)

Author: Alicia Suskin Ostriker

List price: $12.95

New price: $6.64
Used price: $1.65
Collectible price: $35.00

Average review score:

Written with a truly literate and skilled economy of words

Helpful Votes: 0 out of 0 total.
Review Date: 2002-03-13

The poetry of Alicia Suskin Ostriker is complex, original, and written with a truly literate and skilled economy of words. The Volcano Sequence is a compilation of verse that fully showcases Ostriker a master poet in the full vigor of her imagination and wordsmithing talent. Learn To Recognize The Gestures: when her hands cup her breasts/she enjoys her sweet strength/sap ascends the oak//dancing she causes/the young to dance/and to kiss//she may carry a weapon/a knife a gun a razor/she may wear a belt of skulls//when she discharges her anger in laughter/white lightning illuminates the horizon/from pole to pole//often she lays her hand over her eyes/like a secretary leaving/an office building at evening//cradling that infant boy/sitting him on her lap/smoothing the folds of her dress: this means pity//arms crossed: this signifies judgment.

A gorgeous exhalation

Helpful Votes: 1 out of 1 total.
Review Date: 2003-05-25

With eager breath, Ostriker's collection of poetry comes to life with much to convey. These sensuous poems weave a breath-taking tapestry about the feminine and the holy surrounding us in our lives, often hidden but just beneath the surface. Her knowledge of the Old Testament is clear here, and it more than enhances these poems. It gives them an added grace and strength. These poems are almost like a discussion with holy aspects of the universe, grappling toward a glorious knowing. The energy and imagery brought to mind Anita Diamant's "The Red Tent" and other feminist works, and "The Volcano Sequence" inspires just as strongly.

An original, visionary new book

Helpful Votes: 1 out of 1 total.
Review Date: 2002-07-22

This is an extraordinary new book from one of America's best poets, full of powerful imagination, formal inventiveness, tireless curiosity, and profound challenges to the spirit and social arrangements of our time. Extending traditions of modernist and postmodernist long poems, The Volcano Sequence is a 119-page poem in 9 major sections plus a coda, written in a variety of poetic styles and voices ranging from lyrical meditations to provocative interrogations--of the gods, the universe, our politicians and philosophers, and our literary traditions. One of Alicia Ostriker's great strengths is her ability to write poetry that is simultaneously accessible, intellectually ocean-deep, and filled with a page-turning emotional grip. The Volcano Sequence's poetic explorations interweave an array of spiritual, psychological, and social themes. In one of the central images of the book, Ostriker takes on the role of a feminist midwife trying to use her imaginative powers to re-birth female energies that have historically been devoured by patriarchal conventions. Like lava in a volcano, long-repressed liberating energies can eventually find a way to get out and reshape our world--"sometimes the stories take you and fling you against a wall / sometimes you go right through the wall"(119). Almost every page of this new book is filled with memorable lines, the kind of poetry that makes your spine sit up and take notice, that makes you see the world from new, amazing angles.

Winter Stars (Pitt Poetry Series)

Published in Hardcover by University of Pittsburgh Press (1985-05)

Author: Larry Levis

List price: $25.00

Used price: $59.99
Collectible price: $250.00

Average review score:

GREAT book, and I don't even like poetry.

Helpful Votes: 0 out of 0 total.
Review Date: 2007-05-20

I was really shocked to find out what a talented author Levis was. He's really a HUGE talent, even if you really don't care for poetry.

Constellations

Helpful Votes: 0 out of 0 total.
Review Date: 2007-02-18

Levis has a way of writing about himself but connecting to the reader, and is an extremely gifted poet. The poems are devastatingly surprising, the language fresh, the imagery sharp. In `Poet at 17' Levis captures well the energetic recklessness and immortal feeling of youth, and juxtaposes it in perfect contrast to the fearful stasis of adulthood. I notice by the second poem the idiosyncratic use of & for and. I didn't notice it at first, so he employs it naturally and stamps himself into the poems. Levis has a place in history as a poet.

The beauty of Winter Stars is astounding

Helpful Votes: 5 out of 5 total.
Review Date: 1998-06-07

In Winter Stars, Larry Levis covers death, relationships and his life with a poetic power that is rarely found in modern poetry. These poems include reflections on the poet's childhood, elegies to his father, and observations on the human condition. But the most powerful poems deal with male/female relationships, especially those which have become strained or have ended. Among the relationship poems are "After the Blue Note Closes" and "My Story in a Late Style of Fire." The first is an eloquent and sad portayal of a man who is with one woman but thinking of another. The latter is a masterpiece. "My Story," with its long lines and intimate tone, almost seems like a psalm--a psalm of disappointment and hope, loss and need. A must have for anyone studying late twentieth century poetry.

All American Girl (Pitt Poetry Series)

Published in Paperback by University of Pittsburgh Press (1996-02-08)

Author: Robin Becker

List price: $14.00

New price: $10.94
Used price: $3.84
Collectible price: $14.00

Average review score:

An incredible collection by a great poet.

Helpful Votes: 1 out of 1 total.
Review Date: 2001-07-28

This collection of poems by Robin Becker is truly wonderful. Her poems range from funny and ironic, to deeply moving, to acute (if sometime oblique) social critique. Her topics range over a wide range of concerns (as noted in the description above), but she is a poet, plain and simple, not a lesbian poet, Jewish poet, and so on. Her insights are her own, from her own specific perspective.

To me, the most amazing thing about this collection is the high level of quality maintained throughout. While not every poem is a "home run," there are not fly balls or grounders either: none of the filler stuff that is all too prevalent in books by established poets.

My favorite book by Robin Becker

Helpful Votes: 5 out of 5 total.
Review Date: 2001-07-19

I read a considerable amount of contemporary poetry, but I only discovered Robin Becker during the last year. I was amazed by her poems. This is a poet who is struggling to write about whatever glimpses of truth she can find, not settling for easy answers or arresting, but ultimately hollow, metaphors or symbols. Additionally, one must consider that many gay or lesbian poets either seem to write primarily about their sexuality, or they attempt to keep that autobiographical fact out of their books (for fear of being cast by readers as being solely a "gay poet.") Even in the literary world, I think that ambiguity makes many readers nervous. Any poet facing the decision about whether to reveal his or her homosexuality in print knows (and quite possibly fears) being pigeonholed because of sexual orientation. Becker's work is ambiguous (or, more clearly, complex) only in that she chooses to focus on many different subjects, with her lesbianism being one of many subjects from which she gleans meaning. Thus, she cannot be categorized neatly. For any poet, such uniqueness is almost always a compliment, and it definitely is one in her case. I read all of Robin Becker's books this summer, and each (with the exception of her first collection, included in *Personal Effects*) had at least a few poems that were amazing and will remain in my memory forever. However, if I had to choose a favorite book, I would pick this one. The sheer quantity of highly successful poems in this collection makes reading *All-American Girl* a very rewarding experience.

American Mosaic (Pitts Series in Social and Labor History)

Published in Paperback by University of Pittsburgh Press (1993-10-07)

Author: Morrison

List price: $16.95

New price: $8.94
Used price: $0.01

Average review score:

Bite-sized stories in the style of Studs Terkel

Helpful Votes: 12 out of 13 total.
Review Date: 1997-06-30

This is a great resource and a priceless record of the immigrant experience in America. Morrison and Zabusky collected stories in people's own words and sets them down here, so we can all see first-hand just how the USA came to be such a melting pot. Stories of hardship and pride leap off the page. A terrific book to wave in the face of people who don't seem to remember that we were all immigrants at one point or another

A priceless compilation of History for ANY reader

Helpful Votes: 6 out of 6 total.
Review Date: 2000-05-24

Morrison and Zabusky have outdone themselves by gathering stories in immigrants own words and compiling them in this delightful book. It has been a long time since I've read any nonfiction, but because of this book and how well it captivated me, nonfiction is what I crave most. The stories are so detailed and I can honestly say that at times I actually felt the story-tellers pain. This should be required reading for all high school students. I am so glad I stumbled on to this gem!

Babel (Pitt Poetry Series)

Published in Paperback by University of Pittsburgh Press (2004-11-07)

Author: Barbara Hamby

List price: $12.95

New price: $6.98
Used price: $4.98
Collectible price: $12.95

Average review score:

Another Guest for the Ideal Dinner Party

Helpful Votes: 3 out of 5 total.
Review Date: 2005-05-13

This is a collection of complex, intense, extremely rich riffs on urban life in America and France -- right now. And, just in case all those adjectives makes you imagine I'm ranting about some sort of unfocussed, drugged out beat wannabe ramblings -- I mean Hamby is generous with her intelligence and sophistication and elaborates both into mind bending odes with a stunning sense of classical balance and judicious length. This poetry is as sexy as Miles Davis's type of cool. If I were still giving dinner parties every other week, I'd invite her over every other month. Not all the time, mind you; but DEFINITELY often.

a flurry, whirlwind, and wonder

Helpful Votes: 5 out of 6 total.
Review Date: 2004-11-23

Ms. Hamby is a truly gifted poet. Her words fly from the page like a swarm of butterflies and bees, buzzing and fluttering in an intense sphere tickling your every vein. Every poem is a fusion of rant, dance, and holler, lovliness, and song. This is a true gem.

The Biosphere and Noosphere Reader: Global Environment, Society and Change

Published in Kindle Edition by Taylor & Francis (2007-03-20)

Authors: Paul R.Samson, David Pitt, and Mikhail S.Gorbachev

List price: $36.95

New price: $29.56

Average review score:

A great contribution

Helpful Votes: 1 out of 1 total.
Review Date: 2000-09-14

This book has come to fill a gap and to present to students and lecturers an excellent tool for the handling of this subject in a serious and responsible way. I strongly recommend the book, particularly for ecology and environment courses in the social sciences.

Vindicating Teilhard

Helpful Votes: 5 out of 5 total.
Review Date: 2002-05-20

Coined in 1922 by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin SJ (1881-1955), in association with Edouard Le Roy and Vladimir Vernadsky, the word and notion of the NOO-SPHERE were introduced to the English-speaking world by Vernadsky's paper on "The Biosphere and the Noosphere" published in 1945 in "American Scientist" (Vol.33, pp.1-12). In "Fundamentals of Ecology" (1962:26; 1971:35) Eugene Odum said, "This is dangerous philosophy, because it is based on the assumption that mankind is now wise enough to safely take over the management of everything!" In fact, Teilhard assumed nothing about the wisdom of HOMO SAPIENS. But, whether we like it or not, we ARE increasingly responsible and accountable for the management and husbandry of everything, starting with Planet Earth but already extending to the nearest "islands" of outer space. As Mikhail Gorbachev said in 1999 in his foreword to this Reader, "We have reached the phase in cultural evolution where we must assume full responsibility for our power... Knowing and reaching our fullest potential within the constraints of the BIOSPHERE must be the ultimate goal - the driving vision of the 21st century. And the NOOSPHERE concept suggests a philosophy for such a necessary balance" (p.x).

With the possible exception of Blessed John Duns Scotus, no one since St John of Damascus has surpassed Teilhard in his reverence for the "stuff" of creation and of our incarnation. He was fascinated at the many forms of matter, culminating thus far in our genes and the brains that stem thereform. In the known {and knowable?) universe, they are unsurpassed in molecular complexity and reflective competence. Potentially linked together globally by a world-wide-web or internet of communications media, our brains constitute that form of reflective or "thinking" matter that Teilhard called "the NOO-SPHERE." It is concentric with the solid, liquid, gaseous and reproductive or "living" forms of matter, which Edward Suess described as Earth's lithosphere, hydrosphere, atmosphere and biosphere.

In this excellent collection of readings, Paul Samson and David Pitt have largely vindicated Teilhard's vision of the NOOSPHERE and will have opened the eyes of many to the depths that are yet to be seen in the mysteries of the universe.

Brad Pitt (Editors of Us Magazine)

Published in Hardcover by Little Brown and Company (1997-09)

Author:

List price: $24.95

New price: $2.00
Used price: $0.39
Collectible price: $24.95

Average review score:

The Best Book on Brad!

Helpful Votes: 25 out of 27 total.
Review Date: 1999-05-19

Of all the books on American actor Brad Pitt, this is THE book for movie fans! It includes fantastic pictures of his ever-changing styles, as well as great articles on him and a detailed chronology of his films. Even die-hards who think they know all there is to know about Brad Pitt will be surprised to learn even more about him in this fantastic book. Highly recommended.

it exellent,extraordinary and fantastic

Helpful Votes: 5 out of 24 total.
Review Date: 1999-02-18

this film is the most fantasic film i have ever seen.Brad pitt is so hucky and gorgious i would love to kiss him.

Pitt Books