Customer Reviews

Why the Ships Are She (Stahlecker Series)

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Terri Ford's _Why the Ships Are She_ is in a total delight--all glee, wit, charisma and surprise. She's one of those rare poets who understands that humor and seriousness can, and should--really, must!--co-exist. There's not a pretentious or a sentimental bone in her body, and that means she gets to real emotions in all their complexity over and over and over again. I love her jumpy, skippy, tricky syncopating rhythms. Terri Ford has a great ear, a great heart--and writes great poems. Buy this book right now! You'll recommend it to your friends. And you'll realize all over again that fun is a wonderful, serious, poetic business.

Don't read this book if you're faint of heart. It will melt your teeth. It will save your soul. These poems stare back at you, as the poet writes about a snakey mating ritual, with "mouths/ full of needles, wide/ as bejesus, sleeping // in the hyacinth marsh." Terri Ford is the grand anaconda mama incarnate, with enough passion and humor and absolute delight in language to help us all through the darkest day.

This book is heartbreaking and hilarious, much like life when you've got the right attitude. Ms. Ford certainly does. I reccommend this book to anyone in need of a kick in the pants. Ms. Ford treats words like tinker-toys and reminds us that poetry is indeed fun.

this is a gem. each one of the poems rings true. the careful reader is treated to a wild ride through the literary landscape of a master poet. i strongly reccommend this collection to anyone willing to check artistic prejudice at the front gate. thumbs up for ms. ford.

e.e. Cummings famously wrote that poetry is "the only thing that matters", but one can not fully appreciate that sentiment until one has read the works of Miss. Ford. Each word is skillfully crafted, like the notes of a great symphony, rising abstractly from the page to form a new methodology of looking in to familiar places. How lucky we are, to be allowed to share her brilliant vision of love and circumstance, pomp and truth. She scribes large, colorful canvases, compressing them to the written page and folds them into paper airplanes that float by. You see them fly, but can never understand how they do. That is the beauty of these elegant poems.

Why the Ships are She? Because Terri Ford says so, and with the authority of a true artist. These poems are full of heart and wit and wisdom. They speak directly, intimately to the reader, and once they have your ear, they tell you things worth hearing, that you've never been told before! I love this book, and would give it six stars if I could.

as exuberant as skipping in the springtime. Gritty, fun, real, very original. Ms. Ford is her own woman, and we are the richer for it!

Wake up and smell the coffee, poetry readers. Here is Terrific Terri Ford. From its unforgettable cover to its stunning last poem, "I die", this book is original, surprising, hilarious and as one poem says "wild with misery and dangers"--and that's good news for contemporary poetry. These poems are commanding yet absolutely intimate, brave but vulnerable, alert to the soundings of words and the groundings of sense. How does she do it? Read it and weep, laugh, have the breath sucked out of you. You need it, oh you who know who you are!

Imaginative and truly original - as surprising and fun as the poet herself.

This book was awesome! Nothing more can be said.