Slow Work Through Sand (Iowa Poetry Prize) [Paperback]

Leslie Ullman (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Kirkus Reviews

Since winning the Yale Younger Poetry Award in 1979, this Univ. of Texas (El Paso) professor has continued to write about a world of color and stone. But theres nothing vibrant or lapidary to her verse: Lapis Lazuli, Onyx, and Amethyst turn inward to the poet, who laments her failed loves and her aging, even as she celebrates her wildness, her looseness, and her spontaneity. Nature is refracted through selfso is tragic history in The Way Animals Areand Ullman prays to the deserts, mountains, and lakes in the landscape of her life. Disparaging her early work for its art-glass intellectualism, Ullman now embraces, in a series of poems, her horses, for their animal love. Estrogen and Passage lament the denial of her Jewishness in youth, and her lost prettiness in the present. Without the ambitions of girlhood (Ambition), Ullman forms her slow tongue into forgettable poems. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Review

American Flight #549
Amethyst
Aquamarine
At The Estate Auction
Black Onyx
Calypso
Calypso, Twilight
Chant
Cruising
Estrogen
Feathers
French
Gourd
Gourd
The History Of Women
In The Very Beginning
Lapis Lazuli
Lent
Lightning
Mauve
The Mountain Outside My Window
Museo De Oro, Lima, Peru
My Father On The Dock
Night Trade
Notes On An Island, Wisconsin
One Side Writes To The Other
Passage
Prayer
Resolve
Rose Quartz
Running Horse
Sea Opal
Shadow Dance
Slow Work Through Sand
Somehow
Taos
This Year Summer Comes Like A Catherine Wheel
Tonight The Moon
The Way Animals Are
Why She Reached
-- Table of Poems from Poem Finder®

Product Details

• Paperback: 102 pages
• Publisher: University Of Iowa Press; 1 edition (March 1, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0877456151
• ISBN-13: 978-0877456155
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 6 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.3 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,726,931 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful work from a cherished professor, May 9, 2006

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Mr. Silence (The Bowery) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Slow Work Through Sand (Iowa Poetry Prize) (Paperback)

I've had the pleasure of learning to love poetry under the guidance of Leslie Ullman, and I've also had the pleasure of enjoying her work. Slow Work Through Sand, her third collection, is an important part of the tradition of American poetry because Ullman's gift of capturing the struggles with age and home cannot-- shouldn't-- be ignored. Her use of color and its effect on psyche is wonderful. She has a gift for language and rhythm, and her use of line breaks is inspiring. Pick this one up.