Terrapin Poetry

Open this book at random and find a trove of thrilling images and unexpected metaphors: tiny bells jingling like sins, "a cool lake of indifference," "an impossible wheel of hunger." Read this book beginning to end and discover a dark trajectory, the work required to integrate one's family of origin with a wider consciousness and responsibility. As have those in Geraldine Connolly's previous books, these poems fly. But, equipped with the acute sensitivity of an aileron, they fly higher and more daringly-exposing for us our own "beating heart, its thump and clamor." This is the work of a gifted poet at the height of her powers.

This hilarious, imaginative book packs cigarette butts, Buddhist prayer flags, a spastic colon, Leviathan jaws, and gnats reincarnating as neonatal nurses into just one poem. Others say "Yes, to grunts and drooling"; find a Zen master in a bobcat spotted while driving; and experience an epiphany while driving with closed eyes. Bellamy's humor is a lens exposing our foibles, fears, and loveliness. Her unstinting, self-implicating humor skewers culture, "I eat only fresh, locally sourced sadness," and politics, religion, gender roles, and relationships, "swinging [her] axe at the root of delusion." -April Ossmann, Event Boundaries

The gorgeous poems of Michael T. Young's The Infinite Doctrine of Water offer the rewards of deep reflection. The poet's sharp eye and attentive ear capture the delicate light and shadow of urban life and personal memory. New York and Jersey City provide the backdrop for subtle yet incisive meditations, as when "Devotional" portrays the Belt Parkway's approach to the Verrazano Bridge through a vivid moment of grace, where "ranks of waves / wear breakers like medals of impermanence."

Like "sunlight stroking the birds' throats so it comes out as song," Ann Fisher-Wirth's graceful and sturdy lines unsettle the seemingly familiar. A writer of moral gravity, her distilled attentiveness presses against our all-too-common ambivalence and detachment from the ordinary world. Whether set in Mississippi, California, the Ozarks, or France, the poems in The Bones of Winter Birdsexhibit an abundance of compassion and civility. As Fisher-Wirth praises, laments, let’s go, language salvages what might otherwise be missed. It's with attentiveness and emotional poise that these poems lay everything bare.

Suspension is that rare book of poetry, as much a narrative as a collection of individually successful lyrics. We follow here the extraordinary events of a life and the visions of the one/the many living it. We end, as in life, so far from where we began that a true sense of progress is made in the reading of this poetry, and yet we've lingered, meditated, listened, because this is work made mostly of imagery and music, subtlety and unflinching consideration. These are poems to return to again-and-again, written by a poet of unique powers.