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Lot’s Wives

Recommendation: Pireeni Sundaralingan depicts a straightforward urgency in everything she writes. She is from Sri Lanka, and her poetry captures elements of that country’s ethnic violence and cultural tensions. However, a credit to her and her poetry, she strives for a language that embraces a sober beauty through precision. Maybe the directness in her voice…

On Kris Vervaecke

"The Quarrel" is a brilliantly written, searing glimpse into the life of Staszek Czyzowski, Polish survivor of World War II camps, and his ruined wife, Kasia. The writer’s exquisite portrait of this stubborn, furious man, rendered without a bit of sentimentality, is so devastating it takes my breath away each time I reread it. The…

On Pauline Uchmanowicz

Her poetry to me seems quite brilliant. I’ve been reading her recently completed manuscript, Trip Meter, and consider it to be first-rate. How shall I put it—maybe the most forthright thing I can say is that, when it’s published, I’d be honored to write one of the blurbs for its backcover. My blurb would praise…

Explication de texte

Recommendation: Her poetry to me seems quite brilliant. I’ve been reading her recently completed manuscript, Trip Meter, and consider it to be first-rate. How shall I put it—maybe the most forthright thing I can say is that, when it’s published, I’d be honored to write one of the blurbs for its backcover. My blurb would…

On Mark Conway

My recommending Mark Conway to the Emerging Writer’s issue is a bit of a farce, mostly because Mr. Conway was recommended to me first—by virtually everyone who has ever read his poetry. I first encountered Mr. Conway at the M.F.A. program at Bennington College, when rumor of his talent was whispered by an enthusiastic chorus…

On Pireeni Sundaralingam

Pireeni Sundaralingan depicts a straightforward urgency in everything she writes. She is from Sri Lanka, and her poetry captures elements of that country’s ethnic violence and cultural tensions. However, a credit to her and her poetry, she strives for a language that embraces a sober beauty through precision. Maybe the directness in her voice has…

Two Gods

Recommendation: What I find unusual in Alissa Valles’s poems is a very strong expression of intellectual passion invested into the historical—or strictly personal—world. Her poetry is coming close to a kind of a “dynamic wisdom” maybe best exemplified in poems like “Two Gods.” I think there’s an exceptional promise in her work, in her spiritual…

On Allison Benis

Ms. Benis has the gifted ability to relay intensity through quiet, subtle language. I am impressed also by her direct, insightful statements which keep the poems tense and alive. I, as you, read a great deal of new poetry, and I am happy (and relieved) to read work that doesn’t just convey sincerity, but which…

On Minal K. Singh

Drawing upon a keen intellect, historic and mythic images, and from her own Indian heritage, Minal makes poems that address essential mysteries. What compels me is how she is able to shape an image that offers revelation, and yet she retains what’s ineffable and unknowable. Like an Escher print, "dots" become "birds/with wing-length and body…