Gravity's Dream [Paperback]

Kate Light (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 15, 2006

Winner of the 2006 Donald Justice Poetry Award sponsored by the Iris N. Spencer Poetry Awards at the West Chester University Poetry Center.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

Gravity's Dream is the inaugural recipient of the annual Donald Justice Award, honoring the late esteemed American poet Donald Justice.

From the Inside Flap

In her third volume of poetry, Kate Light continues to surprise and inspire a widening audience. Her themes -- the hazards of falling in and out of love; looking for "home" in even the most transitory situations; the strange and incredible moments of being alive -- are accessible and relevant for all.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 79 pages
• Publisher: West Chester University Poetry Center; 1000 copies edition (September 15, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0978599705
• ISBN-13: 978-0978599706
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.5 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #574,507 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Luminous Epiphanies Here, March 8, 2007

By 

Robert McDowell "Robert McDowell" (Ashland, OR USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Gravity's Dream (Paperback)

Kate Light, a professional musician, is also a skillful poet of heartbreaking honest and clarity. She is a master of traditional forms who is on the same playing field with Kay Ryan. Her narrative excursions here are surprising and effective.

More to the point, Light is a poet of quiet listening and intimacy. She is a poet whose work reflects a vibrant spiritual practice. In her capable hands, the aptly named Light makes of the human heart a gorgeous onion. Peeling its layers in poem after poem, Light teaches us so much more about ourselves, and about love and our imagined images of love.

Kate Light is an essential poet, a spiritual friend.

Robert McDowell, Author of the forthcoming Spiritual Practice and Poetry

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Written with a gamboling, lyrical intensity, January 5, 2007

By 

Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Gravity's Dream (Paperback)

Gravity's Dream: New Poems and Sonnets is the third poetry collection of teacher and professional violinist Kate Light. Written with a gamboling, lyrical intensity that freely transitions from moment to moment, the poems - some free-verse, some crafted as sonnets, some approaching stream-of-consciousness narration - aptly express the chaotic confusion of surface thoughts in everyday life. "To You": I'm writing to you now. There was no "you" / except a kind of guess; that maybe someone / here or there would catch a drift / of wit or recognition, or, forgive my un- / worthiness, Inspiration. Taken for stiff / by some, undisciplined by others (all true, / all true?), I bow my head before / those judgment gods; & if now some small following lifts / that head back up (as I have said) by the tip / of the chin, looks into the eyes, looks in, / says, I accept these things as gifts, / then, okay, you're who I'm writing for, / far off, or near; who I'm here biting my lip / to be clear to. Yes, you. Yes, you.

1 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Plenty of room for a View, July 11, 2007

By 

Eric Yost (Pennsylvania) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Gravity's Dream (Paperback)

A disappointment. Though formally correct and MFA-precise, the poems seem to betray a pervasive narcissism, a refraction of self-exiled ego, an optical interference where wave and trough cancel each other out. The poems are lyrical, superbly crafted, sometimes witty, but betray a peculiar lack of insight -- as though the author endorsed Pythagoras's view that light traveled outward from the eye. A fine, precise virtuoso's eye ... but only that one eye. Gravity doesn't curve this light.