Customer Reviews

Beyond Heart Mountain: Poems (National Poetry Series)

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There is much to be said about poetry with language so finely chiseled it cuts through the page. Roripaugh's words are a feast for the senses. Myth, history, culture, and memory are but a few of the rich ingredients in this dazzling book of poems. Definitely one of the best books of poetry I've read this year.

A large passion guides these poems from the first line to the last. From tragedy to simple pleasures, an entire range of human emotions is chronicled in this unique collection of poems. Beyond Heart Mountain is a moving experience; a great addition to your library and life.

"Beyond Heart Mountain" is a powerful first book. These poems bring together history and the personal narratives that are shaped by the forces in the world around them, and, in turn, shape identity. Lee Ann Roripaugh's craft is only surpassed by the intelligence she brings to these explorations of the human heart struggling against the rejections the world can level against it. Her prose poems, graceful narratives, and sensual lyric poems are equally able to contain heartbreak and humor, disappointment and celebration. I highly recommend this book.

This volume contains poems and prose-poems that are autobiographical (I assume), biographic and mythical. In the biographical series of interned Japanese, the poets' confidence that the story itself is sufficient creates very effective poems - simple language, well chosen details - and a person is drawn. In the mythic poems she uses more "poetic" language and imagery while retaining a highly effective simplicity. In the biographic poems, the segment that includes prose poems, there is a different sensibility, one drawn from hunting, from social isolation as the child of a war bride - a bride who married the enemy.

The most impressive feature of this volume is the confidence of the poet - the trusting of her skill, the power of story, the power of words. While much of the message of the poetry regards the policy of internment, the destruction of Hiroshima/Nagasaki, racial prejudice, childhood embarrassment of parents that are "other" etc., there is no trace of the diadactic in the poems. The poems simply sing.

Beyond Heart Mountain is a wonderful book. The poems are beautifully written, the voices are quite distinctive, and many of the poems are very moving. I highly recommend this volume of poetry!

an electric dazzle of color light all infuse these poems, a terrific joy to read. it's on my nighht stand right now... a true talent!

Each of the poems in this collection contains a beautiful miniature world. Each are absolutely full of surprising yet perfect images, language with an inherent sense of music, and devastating emotional force. The emotional tone of the poems run the gamut, but the poems are hysterical when funny, velveteen when warm, and brutally piercing when sad. I feel haunted by the way that the poems moved me and privileged in how much I enjoyed reading them.