Authors - E

The Space Between (Hanover Press, 2000) resonates with strength, vulnerability and longing as Sandra Bishop Ebner explores the space between the nurse and the patient, the living and the dying, the self observing the self in evocative, observant and painfully honest poems.

Lynnell Edwards brings us The Highwayman’s Wife (Red Hen, 2007), a delightful retelling of myth and legend, adding wildly exotic gardening and cooking poems to the mix to keep it fresh and sassy. It’s exuberant yet elegant with a welcome concern for diction. An earlier book, The Farmer’s Daughter (Red Hen, 2003)also gives us lively lyric narratives filled with the world and its details. A talented poet indeed, one to watch for and admire. (new 5/07)

Nixies (Pemmican Press, 1993) a 50 page chapbook of poems and prose poems by Robert Edwards, is filled with his skillful imagery and the delicacy of language that are the hallmarks of an Edwards poem. Radio Venceremos (Arcady Publishing, 1990) is an earlier book of hilarious yet visionary poetry about class struggle and socialist goals.

The Palace of Bones (Ohio University Press 2000) won the fifth Hollis Summers prize for Allison Eir Jenks. Both dark in its vision and light in its tone, these poems are their author’s self-confident invitation to join her in a dreamscape world she knows intimately and has made familiar if not entirely safe. Tragic, subtle and strong.

Susan Elbe affirms that "what matters is the wanting" in the poem "This Isn’t About You" from the wonderful Light Made from Nothing (Parallel Press, 2003) and in each of the nineteen poems in this chapbook we are transported by her specific language, her knowledge of what to say and what to withhold. These poems took my breath away. In her full length collection, Eden in the Rearview Mirror (Word, 2007), more fine writing to savor. These poems are beautifully crafted and luminous, although the subject matter is serious, often about loss and absent love.  Revised 11/07

*** Karl Elder:  Mead (Marsh River Editions, 2005) is a collection of twenty-six Abecedariums, high-spirited word-play. Not only are they impressive examples of playful craft but they "demonstrate an amazing tonal and emotional range"(Henry Taylor). Mead was a Lorine Niedecker Award Winner. An earlier chapbook, The Geocryptogrammatist’s Pocket Compendium of the United States (Robert Schuricht Endowment Editions, 2001) is a clever sequence of haiku, one for each of the fifty states of the union. Both are recommended for their originality, imagination, and spirit.   His newest chapbook, The Minimalist’s How-to Handbook (Parallel Press, 2005) continues his tradition of very short, clever poems but varies them with the addition of several longer sequences. Fresh from the National Poetry Review Press is the full –length collection Gilgamesh at the Bellagio (2007). This entertaining book is divided into Abecdariums and Zabacedariums, with a single long poems dividing them. The poems are intellectual delights brimming with wit, energy, and imagination as he explores the nature of art and today’s pop culture. For information on poet as Editor of SEEMS 38 and link to poems, click on magazine title. (Updated 3/08)

Another Language (Papier Mache Press,1988) was the last book by poet Sue Saniel Elkind before her death. Besides her fine poems, it is filled with photographs by Lori Burkhalter-Lackey celebrating the many faces of age. This poet began her writing career at the age of sixty-four.

Roselyn Elliott won the first Blueline Chapbook Award with The Separation of Kin (Blueline, 2006), a collection of twenty finely-tuned poems steeped in the country air of New York State’s Adirondacks. These are poems about farm and farmers and family life so fresh that you can smell the new--mown hay. The poet paints a tender family idyll with a brush that finds the telling detail and in the retelling makes it clear. Lovely. (added 11/3/06).

A Theory of Everything (Pudding House, 2003) is the intriguingly titled chapbook by poet Alan Elyshevitz. His poem range from Akhmatova and Neruda to summer camp, from physics to philosophy, and are replete with arresting imagery and metaphor. "The bell licks the air with its metal tongue," for example.

Rhina P. Espaillat is a Latina writer of grace and charm in both the full-length Where Horizons Go (New Odyssey Press, 1998) and the chapbook Mundo y Palabra The World & the Word (Oyster River 2001). In these life-affirming poems one finds keen intellect, plainspeaking directness and musical diction.. Even more outstanding is the Stanzas prizewinner, The Shadow I Dress In (David Robert, 2004). These lyrical poems showcase formal poetry at its best and this is one of the most outstanding books to come out this year.  To read this author's poems visit:  http://www.poemtree.com/Espaillat.htm

Michael Estabrook gives us his unique portrait poems, illustrated with clever pen and ink caricatures by Dan Nielsen, in this 20 page chapbook, Stripped & Shivering.(BGS Press, 1993).