Where Horizons Go: Poems [Paperback]

Rhina P. Espaillat (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1, 1998

A collection of unforgettable poems, 'Where Horizons Go' is as compelling as it is technically stunning. The book bridges the sometimes vast distances between the personal and the impersonal, the transitory and the permanent, the imagined and the real, the internal and the external, the self and the other. The language here is always clear, always controlled without sacrificing sincerity or honesty. Read this book again and again and be rewarded every time.

Editorial Reviews

Review

The poems are terrific: moving, intelligent, authentically felt and beautifully musical. When Espaillat works in rhyme and meter, which she does frequently, the power of her narratives and perceptions transcends their difficult forms. --San Diego Union-Tribune, 8/7/2010

About the Author

Rhina P Espaillat

Product Details

• Paperback: 70 pages
• Publisher: Truman State University Press (May 1, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0943549566
• ISBN-13: 978-0943549569
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,355,493 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Bringing Students Back with Rhina, December 30, 1999

By 

reverser (Newton, Massachusetts) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Where Horizons Go: Poems (Paperback)

I've taught Rhina's work for the last two years at a small northeastern college, and the students respond to her as to no one else. They understand her work and love it, and when they're not sure, she intrigues them mightily. You cannot go wrong with "Where Horizons Go."ÿ

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Conversational formal verse, February 13, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Where Horizons Go: Poems (Paperback)

I've been reading Rhina Espaillat's work for a decade. She enjoys the restriction of formal verse: sonnets, villanelles, and sestinas, for example. On the page, her work looks formal. In the ear, it sounds conversational. It's a difficult and precise balance, and when it works, the effect is magic. She's been making it work for nearly fifty years.

The poet was born in the Dominican Republic. English, her second language, is a subject she taught for many years. She revels in the glories of it, all the beauties of poetic device. She brings to her work the wisdom of an immigrant, a wife, a mother, a grandmother, a teacher, and a shrewd observer of the poignant details of nothing more than the color brown, and nothing less than her own parent's Alzheimer's Disease.

These poems will raise the hair on the back of your arm.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This book is elegant, civilized, charming, and wise., February 3, 1999

By 

Miles D. Moore (Alexandria, VA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Where Horizons Go: Poems (Hardcover)

Rhina P. Espaillat's "Where Horizons Go" is for readers who look for poetry to curl up with on a rainy day with a pot of tea. Espaillat's exquisitely crafted, polished formal verse never raises its voice, but speaks in the quiet, conversational tone of a wise but self-deprecating best friend. "Sixty-Five" demonstrates her rueful humor: "My body hates me. And it's mutual, too./ We never speak these days except to fight./ There's less and less I like it still can do./ My bladder yells at me; my clothes are tight." Every poem in the collection is a gentle gem, the work of a poet who has experienced much, but has never wavered in her bedrock belief in order, reason, and civilization. When her grandson Evan accuses her of being "too tidy," she replies, "True, tidy seldom goes where genius goes,/But then how many do?" She delights in the work of artists who illuminate everyday life, like Vermeer, "whose people, drenched in light, like honey, wear/the blessing of the hive." To read "Where Horizons Go" is to enter into a world where the everyday is infused with quiet magic; to reread it is like meeting a beloved old friend on the street. At the end of "Rachmaninoff on the Mass Pike," Espaillat says, "All the heart wants is to be called again." Her poetry calls to readers' hearts, with modest but masterful authority.