Poetry. "Over the decades of writing, Joan Larkin has proved her mastery, whether the poem is mythic, elegiac, or biographical. Her honesty is overwhelming, but it is coupled with poetic cunning, gorgeous language and a rhythm and tone so precise and appropriate that it is--as in the great poets--transparent. There are no tricks and no evasive moves, nothing that in ten years she will be ashamed of or confused by. She is a poet of compassion and pity. Where it is appropriate, she is merciless, especially to herself. I love reading her poems; I love reading them over and over. I salute her"--Gerald Stern.
I am the first to admit that I am not a regular reader of poetry. I probably don't even qualify as an irregular reader of poetry. So is it a complement to the author of this wonderful collection that I loved every one of her poems? I hope it is, for the writing here speaks directly to me, lifts me up and moves me to a different place, and would not have the slightest ability to do so were it necessary for me to decode it first. And frankly, I have no doubt that sophisticated readers of poetry will find the same to be true for them. I barely have any favorites among the riches here, though I am partial to My Body, which I find astonishingly honest and playful and so human. And the poems about drinking, relationships, love, mothers, fathers, brothers, loss, grief. I want to know more about each person and place and time and incident she writes about because each touches me. Buy this book - if you love poetry and if you don't.
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