This fine anthology spans a huge range, as you might expect with a collection created in such a democratic manner. Sometimes range dilutes a collection, but here it works to the book's advantage, creating surprise as the poems spark against one another. Short essays by members of the list serve work like punctuation throughout, creating breathing room for the poems as well as commentary.
And there are so many delights! There's quite a good deal of finely-wrought verse in traditional forms, highlights of which include of the rhymed quatrains of Rachel Dacus's "Femme au chapeau" and Jilly Dybka's "Lost Things," the sonnets of Marilyn Taylor and Christine Whittemore, and the grace of Ellen Goldstein's "Meadowbrook Sapphics," Ruth Foley's "Triolet for Eric," and Annie Finch's "Letter for Emily Dickinson."
Subjects of cancer and illness were sensitively handled by Jean Anaporte-Easton in "poem for the new year," Ann Neuser Lederer's "The Undifferentiated," and Susan Meyers's "Awaiting My Brother's Pathology Report..." These poems moved me deeply. I also loved Penelope Scambly Schott's meditation on aging, "April, Again."
Kimberly L. Becker's close observation in "The Fallen Apples," Catherine Daly's smart take on women's lingerie in "Of Hollywood," Annie Deppe's repeating film clip of "The Throat Singers," Kate Greenstreet's meditation on cows in "Lives of the Saints" were all mesmerizing. I loved the many tributes to other writers and artists, including David Graham's "Long Overdue Note...," Yerra Sugarman's "To Miklos Radnoti," and Braden Welborn's "Paradise Garden."
I was interested in how often Biblical or mythological themes kept appearing. Favorites among those include Kate Bernadette Benedict's "Sheela-na-gig," Kathleen Flenniken's "It's Not You, It's Me," Cynthia Roth's "The Sound of Love Failing," and Katha Pollit's "The Expulsion."
And I don't want to omit praise for poems by Molly Peacock, Ann Fisher-Wirth, Barbara Crooker, Jeanne Marie Beaumont, or the incredible poems transforming trauma into art by Wendy Taylor Carlisle and Ana Doina. All in all, this is a remarkable anthology.
