Authors - H

Although Joe Haldeman has made his reputation as a writer by his award-winning science-fiction, Saul’s Death & Other Poems (Anamnesis Press, 1997) showcases his lucid and varied poetic works of art. A good mix of narrative free-verse and traditional formal lyric verse, these poems speak their music with sensitivity and empathy about the perils and joys of life and love, memory and childhood, science and nature.

 Paul Hamill’s lovely chapbook, Winter Mind (Pudding House, 2003)brings us almost two dozen of his verse, both free and formal. It’s subjects range from ice storms to Prague, to Wallace Stevens, to the destruction of Pompeii, to the nature of cat.

Doubting The Tide (Mellen Poetry Press,1992) , is the work of Carole Wood Hardy who focuses on precise images in these poems of nature and memory, of daily life and political unrest, creating these finely-honed narrative pieces.

 Scheduled, Unscheduled Appointments (Spire Press, 2003) is a generous chapbook of poems sharp as a stiletto by the talented Gayle Elen Harvey, ten of which are taken from paintings. The subjects range from these still lifes through haunting elegies for loved ones, poems of the natural world and striking political poems, to the destruction of the World Trade Center. Her newest chapbook, Vanishing Points (Sow’s Ear, 2005), continues with poems of both nature and visual art and also includes a wonderful elegy to Aga Shahid Ali. Two limited edition chapbooks are here, as well: Working The Air (Winter Creek Press,1991) and Flower-Of-Turning-Away (Geryon Press, 1992), and a Greatest Hits (Pudding House, 2001). Gayle Elen Harvey is one of the best poets of our generation. Her imagery, metaphor, and overall use of language are breathtaking.

Set Against Darkness (Jewish Women’s Resource Center, 1992) are quiet, contemplative poems of memory and are informed by poet/physician Grace Herman’s love of nature and her call to conquer the angels of death wherever they appear. These simple poems beguile the reader.

Stephen Herz’s new book Whatever You Can Carry (Barnwood, 2003) is an expansion of his outstanding Pudding House chapbook of the same name. These deeply moving and powerful, Holocaust poems vividly remind us of what we must not forget if we are to remain human Outstanding.

 Diane Holland is the author of the prize-winning chapbook The Hand Stayed from Its Desire (Predator Press, 2006). These are poems of the body, both human and bird, precise and beautifully crafted. The poet is also a painter and print maker, which informs each of the twenty-eight poems with the exactly right details to enliven the work. And they have wonderful sounds. (added 11/1/06)

  Paul Hostovsky:  Sonnets from South Mountain (Stanley Poetry Press, 2001) gave us Paul Hostovsky’s witty, thoughtful poems with their quirky stories of childhood and growing up and their delightful rhyming which avoids the boring and predictable. His newest, Dusk Outside the Braille Press (Riverstone, 2006), won the Riverstone Press’s 2006 chapbook award with poems that map the sense organs and what they see, hear, touch. These poems, some playful, some serious, all insightful, brilliantly portray the lives of the characters that inhabit them and move the reader’s spirit with their perfectly pitched language. A winner indeed.   (Updated 2/07)

Elizabeth Howard brings us Gleaners (Mother Earth Press, 2005), a collection of lyric poems that are pungently spiced, dark and dazzling as she mirrors the tragedies and joys of people living through the cycles of the natural world.    (added 8/05)

Marcia L. Hurlow’s Anomie (CustomWords, 2004) is a subtle lyric exploration of the mind in place. Paul Zimmer writes that there is a gentle alert stillness here, deep and archetypal, accurate and respectful of nature: "The writing is intelligent, restrained and exceedingly well wrought." Two of her chapbooks, Dangers of Travel (Riverstone, 1994) and Aliens Are Intercepting my Brain Waves (State Street, 1991) are smaller versions of the whole, using many of the same poems. (added 9/06)

Flight Patterns (Main Street Rag, 2003), by Karla Huston, won the 2003 Main Street Rag chapbook contest with good reason. The poems are, as Shara McCallum says, "as easy, as natural and as necessary as breathing." There is musicality is these short narratives and gentle humor as well.

Barbara Helfgott Hyett:  Rift (Arkansas, 2008) can break your heart. As personal losses and grief transform to the geopolitical and universal, the artistry of language, especially diction, never wavers or loses its power and beauty. To quote a review by Ellen Bass: "These poems, wrung from grief, anger, and disillusionment, return again and again to an affirmation of the hard work of living." This has to be one of the best of this year’s books. 
    Previously, we find The Tracks We Leave (University of Illinois, 1996), poems depicting moments in the life cycles of endangered wildlife, each accompanied by pen and ink illustrations of each animal by Robert W. Treanor, The Double Reckoning of Christopher Columbus (University of Illinois, 1992), blank verse poems that retell the story of Columbus’ first voyage to the Indies, taken from his diaries, and In Evidence (Pitt, 1986), found poems of the liberation of Nazi concentration camps, told in the words of the liberators: a powerful and harrowing book that made me cry. All are extraordinary. Click here for Poet's website. (added 3/08)