Radiance: Poems [Paperback]

Barbara Crooker (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 84 pages
• Publisher: Word Press (June 1, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1932339914
• ISBN-13: 978-1932339918
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #841,032 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Barbara Crooker's poems have appeared in magazines such as The Green Mountains Review, The Hollins Critic, Tar River Poetry Review, Smartish Pace, The Beloit Poetry Journal, Nimrod, The Denver Quarterly, The Tampa Review, Poetry International, The Christian Century, and America; and anthologies such as Good Poems for Hard Times (Viking Penguin), Boomer Girls (University of Iowa Press), and Commonwealth: Contemporary Poets on Pennsylvania Penn State University Press). Barbara Crooker is the recipient of the 2007 Pen and Brush Poetry Prize, the 2006 Ekphrastic Poetry Award from Rosebud, the 2004 WB Yeats Society of New York Award, the 2004 Pennsylvania Center for the Book Poetry in Public Places Poster Competition, the 2003 Thomas Merton Poetry of the Sacred Award, the 2003 "April Is the Cruelest Month" Award from Poets & Writers, the 2000 New Millenium Writing's Y2K competition, the 1997 Karamu Poetry Award, and others, including three Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Creative Writing Fellowships, thirteen residencies at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and a prize from the NEA. A twenty-six time nominee for the Pushcart Prize, she was nominated for the 1997 Grammy Awards for her part in the audio version of the popular anthology, Grow Old Along With Me--The Best is Yet to Be (Papier Mache Press). She is the author of ten chapbooks, two of which won prizes in national competitions: Ordinary Life won the ByLine Chapbook competition in 2001 and Impressionism won the Grayson Books Chapbook competition in 2004. Radiance, her first book, won the 2005 Word Press First Book competition and was a finalist for the 2006 Paterson Poetry Prize. Line Dancecame out in 2008 from Word Press and won the 2009 Paterson Award for Literary Excellence. More is her latest (C&R Press, 2010). Garrison Keillor has read eighteen of her poems on The Writer's Almanac, National Public Radio, and recently, she read at The Library of Congress.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Crooker's poetry awards are well-deserved...., August 5, 2005

By 

Laurel Johnson (Kansas USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Radiance: Poems (Paperback)

Word Press is a publisher with a primary submission guideline of poetic excellence. Radiance is the winner of the Word Press First Book Prize. That prize is well-deserved. Crookers beautiful poetry is easily understood, coming straight at readers from the heart and marrow.

Her technique of occasionally continuing the poem from its title was new to me, and quite appealing. A personal favorite is "Sometimes, I Am Startled Out of Myself,":
like this morning, when the wild geese came squawking,
flapping their rusty hinges, and something about their trek
across the sky made me think about my life, the places
of brokenness, the places of sorrow, the places where grief
has strung me out to dry......

This poet skillfully creates magic out of the mundane. Her
poems often reflect a graceful blending of bitter and sweet, light and dark. In evidence of that statement, I offer "White Lilacs, After a Painting by Eduoard Manet" in its entirety:
When the world
was reduced to a black flag
of pain, what else could he do
but paint flowers, white
lilacs in a crystal vase,
prismatic in the May sunlight,
their heavy perfume
filling the room?

And what can I do
when my autistic son
shuts down, talks nonsense,
flicks and stims?
I want to go out
and swim in this river
of drenching scent,
so thick you could lick it
from the air. I'd like to shrink
to the size of a raindrop,
make my home on this branch
of white clusters, let the ether
of their odor anesthetize the evening,
a field of blank white snow.

Crooker's world is one of impressionistic beauty, generously shared. She gives us "bruise-blue irises that wince against the yellow wall" and "white blossoms, festive as brides." With her we hear "dogwoods sing loud hosannas" and "notes turned liquid in the autumn sun." Each word and every phrase is carefully combined for our pleasure or understanding of Crooker's world, much like the impressionist artists created paintings dot by precious dot. Her poetry paints rich word canvases, glorious as an Old Master in his prime.

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Barbara Crooker's Radiance, Lesson in Writing, October 5, 2005

By 

Shirley S. Stevens "Shirley S. Stevens" (Pittsburgh, PA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Radiance: Poems (Paperback)

When people in my workshops ask me how to improve their poetry, I tell them to read poems by good poets. Those who read Barbara Crooker's new anthology "Radiance," winner of the Word Press First Book Prize, are in for both a treat and a lesson in writing.
As I read her poems cover to cover, I enjoyed old favorites and discovered new ones.
If you ask yourself why you continue writing poems, consider Barbara's response in "Sunflowers":

When we're gone, what will be left of our small
songs and minor joys? Still, when I drive by a wheat field
turning ochre and amber, every awn and arista shouting sun!
` sun! sun! something in me rises, makes me look
for a scrap of paper, a pencil nub,
even as the hot wind lifts,
blows the dust we are, carries it away.

Notice that Barbara uses words which make us see in a fresh way.
Have we ever looked closely at our world so that we notice the awns[italicize , or bristles, on each head of wheat?
Those of us who have submitted our poetry for publication can
relate to her poem "Twenty-five Years of Rejection Slips." The speaker
asks,
How many trees have been pulped
for this constant susurrus: sending, resending,
shuffling, sorting?
Even the name submission [italicize] suggests a certain deference,
servility, prostration: lying down in front of the mailbox,
and letting the great steamroller of indifference flatten
me into the ground.

Have you ever mailed a rustling, or susurrus [italicize], of papers to an editor?
Have you been flattened by the steamroller of rejection?

In her poems, Barbara celebrates the world in which we live.
Her exuberance is evident in the title poem "All That Is Glorious Around Us."
She celebrates ordinary things and people:

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Something to savor, August 11, 2005

By 

Catherine Agar (Rochester, NY USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Radiance: Poems (Paperback)

I became a fan of Barbara Crooker's after hearing Garrison Keillor read her poem "Ordinary Life" on "Writer's Almanac." I was walking briskly around the track with headphones on, and tears sprang to my eyes as I listened to the poem. Since then I have tried to read all of her work, and was delighted to see "Radiance" come out.

Some of Crooker's themes are nature, family, relationships, sensuality, and motherhood. I hesitate to write that she "uses" the theme of nature. It suffuses her work. Her lush imagery will sometimes take two things one might never have thought of together and pair them so sensitively and lyrically that the heart says, quietly, "Of course." For me, there is a profound sense of recognition when I read her poems: I have seen those same stars, or that same beam of light; I have felt that same way, although I have not articulated it.

In that sense I would say that Crooker's poems are accessible, but after the first pleasure of reading them -- rather like enjoying a long letter from an old friend -- there is the desire to brew a cup of tea and go back and linger over them, picking out favorite phrases and just sitting with them a while.

"Radiance" is a slender volume, but one I plan to tuck into my tote bag to bring along on vacation and beyond. There is enough poetry here to satisfy the longest journey.