Customer Reviews

I Stole a Rock: Poems of Love and Romance

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4 star:		(1)
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Sara King is so insightful and fearless in her examination of the full range of modern love. One can feel her heart race at the thought of full surrender to a love while at the same time her ear is cocked for the first sign of withdrawal. Her ability to balance on the knife blade between hope and despair is extraordinary. Her sense of romance is almost medieval in that there is always a yearning for a love that reality can never assuage or fulfill. Always some twisting and pulling away -- a recognition that this will end and not be remembered. Her imagery is fresh and immediate -- like an early spring with an unexpected frost. It is a particularly poignant book for those who are recovering from a disappointing love, because it also carries the ring of truth and therefore hope. Her work reminds me of ee cummings. Highly recommended.

For a long time recently, I felt as if I were sleep walking through life, with my soul outside my body (choosing perhaps to live in the poetry section of Amazon.com or somewhere equally exotic....) and then I picked up this book of poems. I laughed, cried and sighed and I nodded my head with each poem I read and felt my soul come back to me......The magic of words!

Two of my favorites are "Finding Your Wife Was a Lesbian" (the last stanza is poetry at it's finest) and "The Clean House" (as a cat owner and wife of a "Mr. Clean", I wanted to frame this one....)

It's always exciting to discover a new poet, especially one whose poems you feel as if you could've written yourself. Such are the poems of Sara King. I highly recommend this book to all poetry lovers, women especially...it's on my keeper shelf.

I think of these poems as sharp arrows that hit their target. Perhaps because so many are addressed to "you" I think of them as zooming through the air to some ONE, to some PLACE. They are zingers. Full of experience. King knows what's up and doesn't spare words....though she uses words sparingly. There's plenty of regret but no self-pity. Her voice is her own. The real thing. You will be glad you bought her book.

A poem from this book was TWICE featured on Writers Almanac and read by Garrison Keillor, Oct 17, 2003 and Oct 17, 2004. Check the archives link at lower left at www.writersalmanac.com to hear Keillor read the poem.

Sara King's style is evident in all of these poems. While there are obvious strong pieces, there are several that should not have been included in this collection.

Any description that I could plot down with letters would not equal the range of emotion reached by Sara King's metaphors. Therefore, I will not try. I will urge you, however, to read the "Laundry" poem and you will agree with me. (I heard this poem via Garrison's Keillor's Writers Almanac program on NPR.)

I will admit that I did not, indeed, purchase a copy of this book--I read the complete text via the Publisher's Web site, but believe me: this is worth buying. I intend to order my copy this week.

Allan St. James
Bowling Green, KY
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