Customer Reviews

The Laws of Falling Bodies (Nicholas Roerich Poetry Prize Library)

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Kate Light's collection is a wonderful collection of poems, especially when you consider that it is her first. The poems, mostly formal, use language in a sensual way. you can feel her training as a musician the way the words float over you, melodious is the word that comes to mind. her poems tend to deal with love, but she manages to pull back before she reaches sentimentality. many of the poems deal with music as well. furthermore, the cover art is most fitting for the collection within. and i happen to know that she picked it herself. great collection. count me as a big fan, and i'm waiting for her next book.

Kate Light engages the reader with "Five Urban Love Songs." She has an easy way of dealing with structure and rhythm in "Why a Sonnet Is Like Bungee Jumping."Light is that rare poet who is also a talented classical musician. For 15 years she has played the violin with the New York Opera.

Kate Light is a sonneteer, but her sonnets push the form's boundaries. She writes about love--postmodern love, urban love, tender love and failed love. In her daily life, Light is also a musician and her poems sing.

Kate Light's poems are deep, personal, clever and rich in content, but accessible. These poems are linked to one another to comprise little dramas and short stories; so, poetry does not have to be just about the beauty of the words after all.

E. Pound's wrote good poetry is a composition of words set to music or something like that, and I think that this collection is a perfect example.
The so musical, unpredictable rhythm of the poems -which is a grace by itself- serves also this "metaphysical atmosphere" charged with questions about the vanity of the human wishes .
I cannot find more precise expression than that Molly Peacock wrote about this collection "effortless, sylph-like more conjured then written" .

"The idea of love between us It was a vision he had, a candle he lit, something he cupped his hand around and held gently, they gave to me : " Here, you hold it a while"; and it flickered, was frail, and smelled wonderful. But it was like having a child with no pregnancy, no time to prepare, no clothes or ready bed, no room built, no house. Where to put the child? Where?"

"......you know how it is when you are a child : you hear your body move ; you hear the blood rushing in your ears, and your wild heartbeat on the mattress ; strong and clear, the blinking of your eyes; and when you close them, ecstatic colors surge and press against the lids, like the heart that's racing in your breast. The colors - yellow, grass-green ,rose, turquoise- explode in rhythmic bursts; and the dark is never dark......"