House Without a Dreamer (Nicholas Roerich Poetry Prize Library) (Paperback)

by Andrea Hollander Budy (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist
This collection, winner of the 1993 Nicholas Roerich Poetry Prize, might seem a natural in this age of family values, celebrating, as it does, house and home, parents and children, passion, love, and marriage. The poems go far beyond the surface of these matters, however, and, whether greeting the dawn or charting the progression of passion or funeral preparations, explore the subtle nuances of emotion. In "Dawn," Budy writes of this need to explore, discover, and experience the subtleties attending the delicate instant of change: "I've come dawn after dawn / to slow it down, to trap it. / I want to know what it is. / Not scientifically, / but with my whole body /. . . I have to know what it's like / the moment that ice is not ice anymore / but isn't yet water." These stark, stripped-down verses and images convey layers of complexity: "Passion / travels in the dark--the animal / we do not truly know, the one / we never pet, the one so foreign / to our lives we do not have a sense / of what it eats or where it sleeps, and only know / its death." These are poems for all seasons. Whitney Scott

Review
Advice
Asleep In The Forest
Because We Have Been Married A Long Time
Beginning And Ending With Lines From Shakespeare
Black
Buttons
Choice
The Color Of The Sky
Dawn
Fire
Firmly Married
Getting Back
Gretel
Grief
Jack Sprat
Just
The Line
No One Wants To Be The Witch
The Old Woman Who Lives In A Shoe
One For The Money
Permission
Pigs
Poem For My Brother, Manager Of Go-go Bar In Roselle Park, New Jersey
Snow White
Soup
Therapy
This
This Is An Answer
This Is Not A Letter But Another Poem
This Will Be My Only (1)
Trying To Explain: 1. The Field
Trying To Explain: 2. The Beach
Trying To Explain: 3. The Woods
Trying To Undrstand What Isn't Said
Weeds
What I Want
What I Will Be When I Cannot Be With You
What You Find
When She Named Fire
When You Hear His Name
Women At Fifty
-- Table of Poems from Poem Finder®

Product Details

• Paperback: 75 pages
• Publisher: Story Line Press (October 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0934257833
• ISBN-13: 978-0934257831
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x 0.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #2,555,524 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars You can read it again and again, May 16, 2000

By A Customer

This is, without a doubt, one of my favorite books of recent poetry. Among her many other talents, AHB cleverly recasts fairy tales, without falling victim to Adrienne Rich's tendency to find mythology in everything, and her poetic felicity goes far beyond ironic versions of folk wisdom. She'll teach you about pain and aging, yet her profundities don't ring pedantic. She'll humor you without sacrificing her poetic integrity. I cannot say enough in praise of her craft. Too many writers continue to pass off broken prose as poetry, yet AHB pays close attention to line and teases you with occasional amphibolic turns of phrase. Her emotional insight into relationships and her ability to render those relationships with candor makes her poetry familiar, yet she achieves this without sacrificing the strength of her subversive moments. This book is a joy to read again and again.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Mistress of Otherness, September 25, 2002

By A Customer

Budy's poems take us places, within familiar surroundings, we haven't really been before, or try hard to deny acknowledging. Budy unswervingly engages all that is human and mystical in our time. She can inspire the beasts of the jungle and the chicekens themselves to dance!