Customer Reviews

Reading Berryman to the Dog

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I loved this book! Wendy Taylor Carlisle's poems are beautiful, true and deeply moving. Every word seems well-chosen, and nothing's extra. I love the sense the poems give of a real person behind the words--a smart, funny, heartful woman looking unblinkingly at herself and the world, and bravely telling what she sees. I love that the poems aren't afraid to speak in their own voice or to talk about things that matter. I admire Wendy Carlisle's use of form, which is so masterful it seems effortless. I'd recommend this book to both poetry lovers and people who've never read poetry before--the poems here are so inviting, and worth reading and re-reading.

Reading Berryman to the Dog is a fine first book by an accomplished writer. You'll go back and back to these startling, satisfying poems. Carlisle's is one of the truly original voices in contemporary poetry. The poems are sensuous, muscular, textured. You won't soon forget "The Redhead Conjures Him Up" or "Questions for Joe": "In March you were there,.../wearing a broad expanse of belly, by June/you were gone...." If you're tired of tired poems, this book will revive you.

Reading Berryman to the Dog is a fine first book by an accomplished writer. You'll go back and back to these startling, satisfying poems. Carlisle's is one of the truly original voices in contemporary poetry. The poems are sensuous, muscular, textured. You won't soon forget "The Redhead Conjures Him Up" or "Questions for Joe": "In March you were there,.../wearing a broad expanse of belly, by June/you were gone...." If you're tired of tired poems, this book will revive you.

I met Wendy at a poets' workshop in Arkansas back in June 1996: her turf, not mine. Imagine me, a New York Jew whose marriage was headed toward the shoals forming an alliance with another middle-aged writer, in the middle of Wal-Mart country. She's just about the only person I kept up with from that week in northern Arkansas, and over the years we've exchanged writing and confidences. And now there's this book...and nothing prepared me for the power in it. All the "reviewer words" apply: serene, savage, beautiful. I read the title poem to my Significant Other the night the book arrived and when I was done I had unexpected and unwanted tears in my eyes. You don't read work this fine every day...which is why Wendy's writing stands out as clearly as Wendy herself.

Another voice from the tough and moving tribe of modern woman poets. (see Kim Addonizio, Joan Larkin & Belle Waring). Carlisle's poems are well crafted and sharp.

Buy a copy.

Another voice from the tough and moving tribe of modern woman poets. (see Kim Addonizio, Joan Larkin & Belle Waring). Carlisle's poems are well crafted and sharp.

Buy a copy.

Another voice from the tough and moving tribe of modern woman poets. (see Kim Addonizio, Joan Larkin & Belle Waring). Carlisle's poems are well crafted and sharp.

Buy a copy.

Among the new books arriving on my desk four women emerge and I am happy to report that poetry is in good hands. Two authors are West Coast, two East Coasters. All are informed by America's tradition in Letters. And, thankfully, each writes as if she were the first woman on earth.

Wendy Taylor Carlisle is an East Texan publishing her inaugural edition via Jacaranda Press, a lively California Press based in San Jose. Carlisle has been published widely in American literary journals and this, her first book, makes us say, " Where has she been? It is always amazing to me the number of poets practicing their arts alone and without notice, poets who could rank with the famous of our country. Her sophistication and restraint is stunning, an elegance which comes from years of...what? practice? Where? This does not read like the work of a first-book poet struggling to say its name. Here is a person who trusts silence, the indirect message, and the light around the fire rather than the drama of fire itself. It's as if she found the truth inside herself so deep she didn't have to brag about it. Wendy is a writer who operates in the world of faith. You do not have to see it to believe it. She presents what she knows, the truth of her experience and that of others. She can be "right on" with no punches pulled. Here's a poem called "The War":

She had the war inside so when he came with his napalm his foreign women it only seemed natural the fight would continue

their marriage the tunnel they twisted in their breath hissing like missiles across the perimeter they fit together like hinge and pin blew apart easily as a mined knee left the usual phantom limb

Carlisle is at her best, however, in a languid state of mind, with a detachment which frees the line to be itself. "The Mathematics of Hunger": All she knows adds up to the insight of hand and lip, tallying gnaw and gulp to swallow...

ending with the lines " In the geometry of palm and tongue,/ hunger is the first calculation." Wendy Taylor Carlisle writes of tentative connections to the past -- notes on childhood, the first fragile gift of sensuality, yet it is never "confessional" poetry. She has found the secret. How to jettison the thought beyond biography. She writes as if she had all the time in the world, an audience capable of meeting her on her own terms, a lack of force which is the sign of true strength.

Four women from small poetry presses make a mark on our literary world. Jacaranda Press, a collaborative press, is about fifteen years in the making and hosts seven brand new titles. It is run by Jean Emerson, a poet. One has only to look back to the beginning of the 20th century when 10% of the people owned 90% of the land to see how much the terrain is now changed. This is a new millennium. This is a new breed of publishers creating their own parties instead of staring in the window of others. And we are glad.

Grace Cavalieri is the author of eleven books of poetry and numerous produced plays. Her most recent book is Sit Down, Says Love (Argonne Hotel Press.) Her new play "Pinecrest Rest Haven" is being readied for production, NYC. Grace produces and hosts "The Poet and the Poem" from the Library of Congress for Public Radio.