Pitt Books

Gregory Orr uses a style that is very straight-forward. The poems have a very serious tone. Most of the poems are not very funny. There is usually a point to each poem that is conveyed strongly throughout the poem. A Litany is one poem that has a message that is echoed throughout the poem. The speaker, who is a boy, in the poem shoots his brother. There are a lot of solemn and sad things that go along in the poem that echo the fact the speaker shot his brother. The speaker runs off into his room and the reader does not even know what the speaker did. It is all suspenseful and then about halfway into the poem, the speaker says that he just shot his brother. This is an excellent form of using poems for suspense as the reader is left wondering what happened.
In My Father's Voice, Orr is to the point and leaves really nothing to the imagination in what he did not put in. In the poem, the father screamed at his daughter. It is shown well as the daughter braces herself for the screaming from the father. The daughter's face goes blank and the imagery of the father screaming at the girl is conveyed well. There is no extra lines that are not needed in this poem. It is a nine line poem that gets its point across very quickly and stays on task.
Three Small Songs is another poem that conveys Orr's straight-forward style and his clearly stated points. The first two stanzas are about life and how humans do not live long. It is shown in eight lines very beautifully with the last two lines ending,
we're here
and then we're gone.

The next stanza is about when a mother cries so will the child. It is a very short five lines that tells the reader about a child trying not to cry when the mother is crying. The next stanza is about the speaker as a child lying on the ground at dusk. The stanza shows a child's youthfulness by showing a child just lying on the ground at dusk. A very quick and to the point five lines, Orr's stanzas all mesh together.
Orr's style works very well. He does not dance around the point and has a very serious tone to his poems. His poems are also very calculating with each line seemingly placed in with great precision. City of Salt is a great read. Nothing is left to question after reading his work. His poems give the answers to every question that could arise in his work.

Gregory Orr opens his book of poems with the five lined poem, "Origin of the Marble forest" which is a masterfully created poem about childhood. This first poem captures a moment of childhood nostalgia with piercing precision, and accomplishes this in only five lines. The first poem is only the tip of the ice berg when it comes to Orr's unique style of poetry. The book has a somewhat grim feeling to it and can be chewy at times, but underneath all of the poems there is hope and closure. Orr touches a lot on his mother and brother's death, but even though this subject is touched on multiple times, Orr is able to keep all the poems new and fresh to the reader. This is where Orr really shines, it his ability to touch on subjects of the same attitude, yet he is able to introduce new ideas and perspectives with each poem. One of the best crafted poems in the book is "I found a Bird", in this piece Orr touches on his questioning of self worth in alternating point of views between him and his daughter, the poem is broken into short excerpts, the most moving of which are the lines where he uses his daughter as an inspiration. The poem reads, "I found a bird. / It is night./ I am small./ I am happy now./ the lamp is lit." the serenity and beauty that Orr is able to capture and a few lines of poetry seems to be one of his greatest talents, he showcases this further in "three small songs" and "elegy" in which the poems are broken up into short excerpts that have the power and serenity of a silent freight train. I would highly recommend reading Gregory Orr's "The City of Salt" he uses a dark tone in most of his work, yet has a bright undertone that keeps all the poems fresh to the reader and keeps the reader moving from one poem to the next. The only drawback to the book would be Orr tendency to go back to his brothers death, in which Orr accidentally killed his brother in a hunting accident, this may bother some readers if they are looking for something new and exciting in each poem, I myself was more than happy to venture further into Orr's struggle with the death of his brother, and the fact the Orr kept each experience fresh helped greatly.

Elton Glaser is an American poet that deserves a closer look and a wider audience. Killer words!

This book is for those who are interested in nothing less than editorial perfection wedded to passion. Unfortunately for those of us who love poetry, most poetry written today is as lazy as it is unsubtle, and though the majority of poetry written in any age is generally less than great, it seems that we have entered an age of unprecedented tolerance for writing that is just plain sloppy and self-indulgent. The subject matter and sentiments expressed in this book are fascinating, but the QUALITY of the language itself is impeccable. Even though Glaser demonstrates a mastery of the fundamental principles of prosody, one need not be an English professor to recognize this underappreciated and rarely-anthologized master's authority of voice. But for the serious poet, it is obvious that everything from line-break to caesura is painstakingly chosen in this book.

Consider the following lines, for example, from the poem "Coroner":

"And then the brain, that braided ball/Of sin and intuition, slides out on its own/Slick pulp..."

or the final lines of "Revelation: The Movie":

"they'll all freeze in their seats, eyeballs wired/from the teaser to The End, each pair scanning for/the flash of a name and a new address, as the credits/crawl up the dark drop of the afterlife."

This is a book that reads more like poetry than a novel. It's rich and sensual imagery allows the reader to become a participant observer of the events that are not always readily understood. Once you just allow yourself to become a part of the scenery, and to let the images wash over you, then you begin to be rewarded. This book brought tears of many emotions for me. It is filled with real, honest people, living real, honest lives, and like life it is both humorous and depressing, joyful and oppressed, desperate and free.

The characters in each of the stories in this book are so real that sometimes it is frightening, but in the very best way. I was completely engrossed (shocked, touched, amazed) by each tale. I discovered Jenny's writing after taking a Creative Writing course under her tutelage at a university in upstate New York. On the last day of class she let us read "Touched." I read it the first time, and thought it was good. I read it again a few months later, understood it much better and thought it was great. I then proceeded to read the rest of the stories and was completely amazed. (I think if I had read these stories *before* I took the class, I would have been too intimidated to let her see my own writing.) This is a terrific group of stories, and I wish I could read some more of her writing.

Whelan is the sort of scholar rarely found in this age of academic narcissism. Not kowtowing to fashionability, Whelan presents examples Burke's writings on India in a balanced, considered manner, without including the tempting digressions that could make this a western - non-western multicultural ax grind. Every Burke enthusiast will benefit from this latest excursion into Burke's lesser known works.

Whelan has done a marvelous job at interpreting Burke's political philosophy through the window of Burke's writings on India, Empire, and in particular, the Warren Hastings trial.

This is one of the finer books of recent poetry I have found. While surreal, it also gives the reader something to think about. It's sometimes whimsical, but not completely inscrutable, as some postmodern poets are. Highly recommended.

Elegy On Toy Piano is the sixth collection of poetry from Lenore Marshall Prize finalist Dean Young. The brief, free-verse wordplay mourns the tragedies of life, from the loss of a beloved family pet to the end of a lovers' relationship, but also stretches beyond grief to portray a wide range of mixed of emotions, acknowledging the bad with the good. A serious-minded reflection on the mysteries of life, death, and everything in between. Elegy on Toy Piano: You don't need a pony / to connect you to the unseeable / or an airplane to connect you to the sky. // Necessary it is to die / if you are a living thing / which you have no choice about. // Necessary it is to love to live / and there are many manuals / but in all important ways / one is on one's own. // You need not cut off your hand. / No need to eat a bouquet. / Your head becomes a peach pit / Your tongue a honeycomb. // Necessary it is to live to love, / to charge into the burning tower / then charge back out / and necessary it is to die. / Even for the grass, even for the pony / connecting you to what can't be grasped. // The injured gazelle falls behind the / herd. One last wild enjambment. // Because of the sores in his mouth, / the great poet struggles with a dumpling. / His work has enlarged the world / but the world is about to stop including him. / He is the tower the world runs out of. // When something becomes ash, / there's nothing you can do to turn it back. / About this, even diamonds do not lie.

This is an incredible book for anyone interested in the abolition of slavery.

Christopher Schmidt-Nowara has written an excellent book to understand the process that led to the abolition of slavery in the Spanish colonies in the Caribbean, taking into account the latest developments in Cuban, Puertorrican, and Spanish history. This is an important new viewpoint: to understand the nineteenth-century history of Cuba and Puerto Rico it's necessary to have a fine understanding of Spain's colonial policy and the socio-economic links that these two colonies established with the metropolis. I consider this book a major break through, a very important book for any person interested in the history of the Caribbean, Latin America and/or Spain.

This collection of poems explores, almost painfully, issues of sexuality and religion. Kasdorf has captured the experience of woman who have grown up, and asserted their person-hood in a world where they are viewed as sexual objects; and where the church has rarely been a help, and often a hinderance. Not for the faint -hearted or those looking for 'inspriational poetry' this collection of poems speakes deeply to me as a woman, and as someone who is strongly religious.

This is a wonderful book of poetry that inspires much reflection. Each poem somehow transforms itself into a fragment of my own life's story. The body becomes a main element of Kasdorf's work; religion is also a strong theme, addressing the bubble that tradition can form around believers.

wow, Vaz never ceases to amaze me. her writing is so powerful, these stories made me laugh and cry and and dance in the rain and talk to purple and plant orchids and and my god, it is endless! Vaz has the amazing ability to express her thoughts in the fewest words possible, making the stories all the more breathtaking. these stories capture life and humanity in its rawest, most honest form. love, truth, passion, longing, joy, sacrafice, these stories are the embodiment of every hidden aspect of YOU that you'll never know exisited until you read these words of an angel...

This book really puts Katherine Vaz at a new level.Her other books were great also but Fado really gripped me and made me think about life. Would be of benefit to all

A mixture of Billy Collins, Jack Handey, and, when he's on his best game, Jorge Luis Borges... Some are gems, such as "Halo," "While I Sleep" and "Dying Park" -- short journeys into a magical moment or realm (hence the comparison to Borges)... When he's not on his best game, well, at least prose poems are short. :)

David Shumate's aptly titled collection is an attractive gathering of prose poems. He maintains a simple sensibility throughout the book, and never breaks from its undemanding, unadorned wit to try and make any bold statements about the human condition, his struggles with spirituality, or the difficulties that present themselves when men and women begin to entangle their desires. These themes all make appearances in various places, in "Learning to Eat a Pomegranate", "Wisdom", and "Boarding the Bus to Gomorrah (to name a few), but Shumate steadfastly refuses to pummel us over the head with his ideas about what's important in life or the rules by which one should live and believe. He stays clever and simple (in all the best meanings of the word).

Normally, I get a sense of revulsion when I read clever or witty poetry, but Shumate has struck a strong balance between the witty and the beautiful or mystical, as seen in "Fresh Fish" when he gets confused on the way back from the fish market and begins cooking a fish "in the red hot center" of his desk at work, where his peers have gathered to watch his "professional demise". They are all surprised as the fish begins to sizzle:

"Its sweet aroma fills the air. After a few minutes, my boss clears his throat and suggests it's about time to flip the fish and grill it on the other side. Everyone agrees. Yes. Clearly. It is time to flip the fish."
Ostensibly, Shumate offers us a look at the mystical quality of aging, how the world might start to change, or become mystical again, as we get older and lose some of the faculties which hold reality in place as it seems to be. But he never tells us this. He allows the mysticism and wit of these brief episodes to speak for themselves, as in "Wisdom" where he recalls a village he once came across where everyone was wise. The citizens perform uncharacteristic actions that seem to combine the everyday with the imagined life of a Greek philosopher: "a policeman contemplating an April morning from a gazebo," or "the barber clipping an old man's hair in the park." Shumate recalls asking someone for directions who points him in the direction of a nearby forest. "He said that's usually where people go when they are lost."

We don't have to guess at what Shumate is trying to tell us about the nature of philosophy or wisdom. He's saying very little that's fresh or new, and I think he knows it. That's why he doesn't bother beating us over the head with the obvious. He just proves to us that what we already know is still beautiful and doesn't need to be rediscovered, just revisited sometimes.

This collection touches on a variety of topics, but Shumate returns again and again to the themes of faith and the mind's ability to transform reality. He leaves me with a sense of wonder. First, that someone can keep my attention through a collection of almost sixty prose poems, and second, that something can be simultaneously clever, poignant, and beautiful and become more than the sum of its parts.

Shumate clearly listens to the advice he gives in "Making a Forest":
"It's a delicate and ancient process. You must offer each seed to the soil tenderly. As if it were a virgin and you were a friend of the family." He has created a forest out of brief glimpses, and it's an eyeful.

John Hodgen's Grace hovers like an angel between heaven and earth. His images are at once tragic, at once comical, at once poignant and redemptive. Hodgen leads readers on a faith journey that reveals the essence of life as both beautiful and terrible, yet he always ends with a note of hope. He demonstrates a love for the craft of poetry and a sensitivity to his reader as he reveals how the simplest things - the discovery of a forgotten letter, a lost bird, a small town, an old song, even an event at the Coolawhatchie Blimpie Gas 'n' Go - can lead us to a deeper understanding of the world and ourselves. Hodgen's sensitive and masterful use of rhyme scheme in certain poems in this book makes it a powerful tool for other writers to use in honing their craft.

Reviewer Paul Mariani wrote on the back cover of Grace: "Hard and dark as the world of these poems often is, Hodgen manages again and again to somehow transform the crucified world into a dazzling vortex of language and syntax and yet authentic shivelights of grace. Here is a unique and unmistakable voice for our moment." Well said! If you're seeking inspirational, powerful reading as well as help in perfecting the craft of poetry, Grace is your answer.

I have, for the most part, grown out of the poetry "phase" that I went through in high school. Ten years later John Hodgen's books are the only poetry books that remain on my shelf.

This is, by far, his best work.