Authors - T

Peggy Ann Tartt succeeds in lifting the pall of death and loss with the delicate voice of familial love in her first prize-winning collection Among Bones (Lotus Press, 2002). These poems are sensitive, well-crafted and filled with vivid imagery, keen observations and insight.

The Cats in Zanzibar (Books by Bookends) and What the Waking See (Books by Bookends) are the generous offerings of J. Tarwood, peripatetic poet whose poems range the world he has lived and worked in for much of his life.: Yemen, Turkey, Colombia, Chile, and others, but also mines the rich world of childhood and family. (added 8/05)

Judith Taylor's Curios (Sarabande, 2000) is totally original and sassy with its brief, often enigmatic poems that both flirt and probe as they reflect on shards of familial memory and post-relationship reckonings. She follows this up with Selected Dreams from the Animal Kingdom (Zoo Press, 2003), a book Hilda Raz calls "delicious" with its rich language, high wit and originality; especially delightful are her twenty inventive takes on the sonnet.

Susan Terris' books include Fire Is Favorable to the Dreamer (Arctos Press, 2003) and Curved Space (La Jolla Poets Press, 1998), which was the Editors Choice for the 1998 National Book Series. Her chapbooks include Killing in the Comfort Zone (Pudding House, 1995), Eye of the Holocaust (Arctos, 1999), Angels of Bataan (Pudding House, 1999) and Greatest Hits (Pudding House, 2000). Her newest is Natural Defenses (Marsh Hawk, 2004), which contains a delightful and imaginative section of poems responding to Neruda's Book of Questions. This poet writes exquisitely poignant lyrical/narrative poems that are both linguistically brilliant and compellingly wise. Highly recommended reading. (updated 2004)  http://www.members.aol.com/sdt11/

Maria Terrone's  precise language celebrates the tough, the common, that which endures in The Bodies We Were Loaned (Word Works, 2002). These poems are closely attentive to each passing moment as she evokes "the body’s unequivocal language." This book is one of 2002’s best.  Her second collection, A Secret Room in Fall (Ashland Poetry Press, 2006), a co-winner of the 2005 McGovern Prize, is compelling and imaginative in its surprising and persuasive portraits, its acute observations of places and things.  (updated 12/06)

The Hand Waves Goodbye (Main Street Rag, 2002) is Susan Thomas' fine collection of poems, many of them ekphrastic, touching on Vermeer, Brassei, Pavese. Giacometti and others. In the State of Blessed Gluttony (Red Hen, 2004), for which the poet won the Benjamin Saltman Award, the reader finds the superb feast set by a ravenous imagination. There is tremendous, and refreshing, range and variety to these lively, and lovely, poems.

Birds of Sorrow and Joy (Marsh Hawk Press, 2003) holds the new and selected poems of New Jersey poet Madeline Tiger. Love and loss, life and death, are her subjects, her style direct, truthful and courageous. The poet has an incisive eyes for detail. There is also My Father's Harmonica (Nightshade Press, 1991), 47 page chapbook filled with wise poems of the heart.

Daniel Tobin's third poetry collection, The Narrows (Four Way Books, 2005), ranges back and forth between the West of Ireland and New World Brooklyn as he recounts the many-sided history of his family, locating it within the larger context of world history. The poems are written in richly textured blank verse and possess both narrative power and astonishing lyric depth and grace. (posted 12/05)

***Francine Marie Tolf:  Blue-flowered Sundress (Pudding House, 2007) is a 36 page chapbook of many delights. Although the subjects can be serious and often deal with the ordinary tragedies of living., the poems are not grim or over-laden with sorrow. They are luminous, filled with light and hope. An outstanding collection. Highly recommended. (Added 4/08)

*Woman in Rainlight (Hobblebush, 2004), by Jean Tupper, is a poetry collection filled with humor and ironic wit, with wisdom, gentleness, and clarity. The poet observes ordinary, domestic life and finds it wild at the core. These poems please, surprise, and transform.