Customer Reviews

The Oval Hour (Iowa Poetry Prize)

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Rarely have I felt such an intense joy in discovering a new poet: Kathleen Peirce's The Oval Hour (and her first book Mercy) has reawakened my belief that a poet's vision of the world TOUCHES reality -- it's as if vision is transformed into a pair of hands. Miss Perice's poems are beautiful, they internalize the world and reflect back doubt and awareness. A man's gorgeous thumb in her mouth. A delicate drinking thing made of cup and mouth. A father who becomes a black line eating snow -- just some of the moments when the outside and the inside converge in her poetry. Listen, if you are a serious reader of American poetry and are tired of overt academic poets who know the world but can't see it; if you're tried of poets frightened by "I", poets who fragment their perspectives and voice(s) until their poems resemble hothouse flowers taking root in nothing but air, then read Miss Peirce's The Oval Hour. She sees the world. She writes as if she knows the world is looking back. And if you're really a serious reader of poetry, go back and reread those "academic" poets because you are, after all, a reader.

Another stunning work by Ms. Peirce. This book has also been awarded the William Carlos Williams award for 2000. Add this treasure to your collection of Peirce poetry.