Customer Reviews

The Hour Between Dog and Wolf (New Poets of America)

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"[N]o girls, no jokes, no wine// Is that what art demands?/ ... I can't endure such sullen habits, I want distraction,/ need my gaze to waver, wild as moths on my window: ... Let me be fickle as the Mistral, lazy as Provencal lizards;/ give me the nuances of tenderness,// longing's appetites, the pagan buzz of sex--and may my art/ be mortal ... a daily brush with grace." If the moral of mortality is treasuring the world, then moral intelligence is steeped in its particulars. Laure-Anne Bosselaar's poems make the case as art, or if you prefer, meditation--pagan Ignatian, procreative, or in its most inclusive, practical, caregiving sense, charitable. In modeled stanzas she recaptures good-burgher Nazi sympathizers, spent vegetable gardens, snowstorms, a fatally overinspired poem, her husband's morning Rorschach shock of graying hair, convent school underwear, her mother's Gauloises Bleues dipped in Chanel No. 5, and other coups de grace. The last poem celebrates Thanksgiving, an immigrants' feast, a fitting reminder that the book's language--in one of the author's adopted languages--is comfortably, confidently expressive. It's a good cook's English that savors the telling as well as the tale

These compelling narratives span post WWII Europe to contemporary USA -- the speaker, raised in a convent in Europe traces her life in the cruel environment of the convent to her married life here in this country. The poems are of daily life -- its joys and horrors. They are generous poems, long and meandering. They are accessible, always. Funny, sweet, scary and sumptuous.

Bosselaar's collection is electric. These narratives, often harrowing, speak the stories of many characters. The geographic and emotional terrain of this book is panoramic. This is a book of narratives that speed down the page and take the reader on one hell of a ride.

Laure-Anne Bosselaar writes the poems I wish I could write. Not only does she use English (not her first language) with skill and grace, but she delights in the language itself. "I love to lick English the way I licked the hard round licorice sticks the Belgian nuns gave me . . ." (English Flavors), and "I know words lazy as canals gliding among willows and yews. . ." (Loving You in Flemish)for example. But more than that, I love the intensity of feeling, the joy of the simple appreciation and the pressure of the moment that she expresses so well. I can read her poems over and over again with pleasure.

laure-anne bosselaar is one of the most gifted and moving poets of the past twenty years. seeing her read at Stockton College in December of 1999, I was moved to tears during more than one of her poems. "My Little Sisters of Love and Misery," for example, evokes a beauty and pain that is both striking and poignant for it's attention to detail and lack of self-pity. She speaks for the women who cannot speak for themselves, to the people in her life that she must forgive to survive, and to the world, she gives her unique view of love and laughter. her brilliance lies in the important fact that she never feels the need to sacrifice her sense of humor to get at the tragedy of life, because she realizes they are often one and the same.

when i met ms. bosselaar, she pinched my cheek and called me "dear poetry sister." it spoke volumes about the kind of person and writer that she is. here's hoping she continues to bless us with her unique gift.