Two American poets named E.A. Robinson are "in different ways" here in this single book, though one died before the other was born. What we have is, in fact, an extended example of the bout rimé, that restraint well known and widely practiced many years before the Oulipo. The end rhymes are by the author of "Richard Cory" and "Miniver Cheevy" (neither of these, I think, among the chosen), each line then, up to the rhyme word, supplied by the later, very alive, E.A. If you're inclined to distrust such a trick, disregard it; you've come upon a good book of poems.
--Keith Waldrop
Herein, Elizabeth Ann Robinson inhabits the end rhymes of Edwin Arlington Robinson, entering the cochlea of his ear. She haunts the structure of his verse, a new tenant in his house on the hill: "Eternity/will tolerate some misappropriations." Her method merges what we inherit--from family, from poetry--with what we find for ourselves, the distant past with the day's concerns. Among other things, that's the crux of growing up: "Consistency and mistrust/fight it out." Like talk around the kitchen table at dusk, these poems bring it all to oblique light.
--Devin Johnston
Borrowed words as scaffolding, life as bridge, these poems shine with the numinous: babies, bodies, belief. "So rough/on the fractious skin I ve set/ around myself." A work that is purposeful and powerful, as "Breath and water disappear//into knowledge."
--Hoa Nguyen
