A search through my bookcase provided many wonderful books and chapbooks by poets whose work has appeared in The Comstock Review. I recently assembled the following list of these poets whose work grace my shelves, along with the specific books I own and a short description of the book, or chapbook. Any poet who has ever had a poem published in either The Comstock Review or its predecessor, Poetpourri, whose compiled work I own should be on this list.

How did I acquire the books? Some were sent by the poets themselves and are personally inscribed. Others I bought, as I buy all books by "our" poets of which I am aware. Rereading them has been a wonderful experience reminding me of what tremendous talent exists in our community of poets. For others who would like to read any of the list of books that they find here, I urge them to call Spring Church Book Company, which deals only in poetry books, and Britt will help them. The phone number is 1-800-496-1262, the address is PO Box 127, Spring Church, PA15686. If the item is a small chapbook from a very small press, and Britt does not have it, anyone may e-mail me at jennymac@dreamscape.com and I will contact the poet and find out the price and how you can get the chapbook; most poets have a case hidden under their bed and are eager to sell what’s left in the box! Of course, the larger presses are also available in the online superchains (Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Borders) but experience has taught me that, once the shipping and handling charges have been added on, they are more expensive than Spring Church or Grolier. (It’s a good idea to mention to Britt that the book is on the Comstock web-site so that if she has any questions she can call me.)

These are arranged alphabetically by poet’s last name and will be added to periodically. Any poets who have appeared by The Comstock Review who have published books or chapbooks are encouraged to send copies for short review and list placement. Postings preceded by an asterisk are new or newly changed.

*Everyday Still Life (Persephone Press, 1999) by Lavonne Adams is a prize-winning collection of graceful, often formally rigorous poems, lyrically rich yet subtlely nuanced. Underlying the surface tranquility, Eros informs these poems with its tenderness and ache.

River Effect, by Linda Allardt (State Street Press 1998) is a 56 page collection of well-wrought lyrical free-verse, gentle and elegaic in tone, abounding in nature metaphors. There are many truly fine pieces here.

Dorothy B. Anderson’s By the Yangtze (Pudding House 2000) tells of her Chinese childhood during the 1940's in fine-tuned narrative poems that made this 21 page chapbook fly by too quickly.

*In The House of Time (Chicago Spectrum Press, 2005) and Where Music Lives (Chicago Spectrum, 1999), Louisiana poet Therese Arceneaux gives us two chapbooks of 30 pages each of the lovely rich lyricism we have come to expect from her pen.

Pale Ramon (Zoland Books, 1998), by Rane Arroyo, speaks of the exile, forever separate from his companions, in these absorbing narrative poems, some set in his native Puerto Rico, others set in a variety of other places.

Rowlock (Junction Books 2000) is an 18 page chapbook by Toronto poet James Arthur filled with excellent imagery and metaphor.

Charles Atkinson’s The Best of Us on Fire (Wayland Press, 1992) is a somewhat older chapbook that contains 16 terrific poems, including a personal favorite of mine, "Anger."

Counterterrorist Poems (Pudding House 2002) are songs wrung from the tragedy of the World Trade Center bombing by the talented Anne Babson. These direct, unadorned poems speak of our troubled times, the similarities and differences between each of us, native-born or foreign. The chapbook ends effectively with an extended eight page meditation.

The winner of the 2000 Snail’s Pace Poetry Prize was an outstanding book of contemporary sonnets by Barry Ballard, Green Tombs To Jupiter, followed in 2002 by A Time To Reinvent (Creative Ash Press) and in 2003, Plowing to the End of the Road (Finishing Line Press) The poet’s precise imagery and metaphor make each sonnet shine like a well-cut gem and he never lets the form subtract from the finely crafted blank-verse narrative.

Toronto poet Edward Baranosky’s talent for formal poetry such as the glosa and a host of oriental forms (haiku, sijo, tanka sequences, etc.) are showcased in a set of limited edition chapbooks from the EAB Press: The Outer Coast (2002), Raku (2001), Windbirds (2001),The Doryman (2000), Spindrift (2000), Year of the Dragon (2000), Raindancing (1999), Purgatory Gorge(1999), Sundancing (1999), Eye of the Storm(1998), and Ghostdancing(1997).

Although Ellen Bass’s I’m not your laughing daughter was first published in 1978 (University of Massachusetts Press), my local bookstore was able to obtain a copy for me. Although better-known for her self-help books for survivors of abuse, Ellen Bass is a poet of consummate skill and this mainly autobiographical book is both a personal and a poetic triumph. And her newest, Mules of Love, from BOA, filled with compelling and intimate narrative poems, is one of 2002’s best.

Marilyn Bates’ It Could Drive You Crazy (Small Poetry Press, 2002) vibrates with spirit and irreverence. These are brave, gutsy poems that confront human frailties with clear-eyed compassion, without illusion. We trust these poems that delight with the right words, the right rhythms. An earlier chapbook, Mixed Blood (Main St. Rag Press, 1998), mines similar territory.

Grace Bauer brings us the women of the Bible in these fascinating, wry and witty persona poems that comprise The Women at the Well (Portals Press, 1996). These women are not simpering, docile, paper-doll myths, but real creatures: longing, sassy, sensuous, rebellious and sometimes irreverent. Highly recommended.

Pam Bernard’s My Own Hundred Doors (Bright Hill, 1996) and Across the Dark (Main Street Rag, 2002) both won prizes for their beautifully lucid, compelling poems. Emotionally intense yet controlled, she explores the nature of family and the larger world in delicate yet edgy lyrics.

The Good Kiss (Akron, 2002), by George Bilgere, is all about the many forms of love. The poems are exciting, fresh and surprising, and written by a poet who knows his craft; his line breaks are a constant, skillful delight. Highly recommended.

Terry Blackhawk’s Escape Artist (BkMk, 2003)was awarded the John Ciardi Prize for Poetry. Molly Peacock describes it as a "harvest of a book… the poems are multi-leveled, passionate, varied, thoughtful, intense, and beautiful." There is also Body & Field (Michigan State University Press, 1999) whose clear-visioned, resolute poems, a fine blend of the dramatic, lyrical and narrative, delight and instruct us as the poet mixes sensuous language with intelligence and precision. And finally, there is Trio (Riverside Press,1998), a small chapbook of three myths, Eurydice, Medea, and Pasiphae, with beautiful linocuts by Agnoula M. Peters.

Moving The Still Life (Pudding House, 1993) is a 26 page chapbook of well-crafted poems about art by the fine poet Edward Boccia. More of his wonderful and quirky poetry follows in the full-length No Matter How Good The Light Is: Poems by a Painter (Time Being Books, 1998), poems fusing a painter’s and poet’s insights in unusual and unforgettable ways. Highly recommended.

Two somewhat older poetry chapbooks by William O. Boggs are Swimming in Clear Water (Dacotah Teritory Press, 1989) and Eddy Johnson’s American Dream (Hiram Poetry, 1990). Whether dealing with the factory worker’s life or the farm, country life and nature, the writing is strong and true.

Gaylord Brewer’s Devilfish (Red Hen, 1999) won the 1998 Red Hen Press Poetry Award. These are shrewd poems, often grim, often edged with wit. The style is spare, lean and direct, the narratives have an edgy side that makes for good reading.

Other Nations (Wood Thrush Press, 1999) is Polly Brody’s excellent first collection. Its content centers around the poet’s "other career" as a biologist and ranges around the world she has traveled and visited during her life.

Dorian Brooks’s A Pause in the Light (Holy Cow!Press, 1980) was published under the last name of Kottler, but these are vintage Dorian Brooks poems. It is women’s poetry in the best sense of the word, healing and thematically diverse, with wonderful ending lines.

Brook & Rainbow (Sow’s Ear, 2001), by Andrea Carter Brown deservedly won the 2000 Sow’s Ear Chapbook Competition. These poems of family, love and loss hook the reader at the first line and never let go. The book’s one fault? Only sixteen poems to love. Highly recommended.

*Glass (Pecan Grove, 2000), by Jenny Browne, is a 44 page chapbook filled with imaginative, lively poetry with great last lines. At Once (University of Tampa, 2003) continues to show poems that "celebrate the knowingness of heart and bone, skin and soul." (Barbara Ras)

Noted poet Joseph Bruchac checks in with two chapbooks (Tracking from Racoon, 1986 and Ancestry, from Great Raven Press 1980) and a book, Near The Mountains (White Pine Press, 1987); many of the chapbook poems are reprinted in the book. Bruchac writes of his varied ethnic background (Slovak, Mayflower-American and Native American) but the poems that are especially "his" speak of the natural world in finely-crafted poems which reach the heart.

*The Love Word (Chicory Blue, 2004) is Betty Buchsbaum’s intimate and historical account of the many meanings that cluster around the word "love," beginning with her Jewish girlhood in Manhattan in 1939 and continuing through her long marriage and motherhood. Tender and ironic and unfailingly generous, these are truly fine poems about the things that matter.

Michael Bugeja’s Millennium’s End (Archer, 1999)contains powerful, poignant and wise poems, his masterful use of formal, rhymed verse blending well with the free-verse narratives. And in Flight From Valhalla (Livingston University Press 1991), Bugeja gives us strong and honest poems of Germany, historical and present-day, making for fascinating reading.

*Beverly Burch is the author of Sweet to Burn, winner of the 2004 Gival Press book award. This story of a lesbian couple and their adopted daughter is novelistic in scope and applies to families of any gender as the poems chart the hills and valleys of emotional bonding between couples and their children. Poems are starkly realistic and emotional with crisp imagery.

And Today I Am Happy (Chatoyant, 2000) are vulnerable and emotionally-wrought elegiac city scapes of narrative poems by Penny Cagan. To quote Stanley Plumly, "The crosshatching of her poetic detail is like papercuts, yet there is something beautiful in Cagan’s humility and healing strength."

King’s Highway (Washington Writers Publishing House, 1997) is a taut gathering of lyrics, lyrical narratives and dramatic monologues by Nancy Naomi Carlson. The poems here are attuned to the subtle motions of grief, love and loss, articulated with compassion and inner strength.

Elizabeth Biller Chapman gives us two excellent chapbooks: Creekwalker (mOther Tongue Press, 1995), published under the name Elizabeth Biller, is filled with rich, luscious language in poems of nature and the heart while Backbone of Night (Creekwalker Press, 1997) features some longer poems.

Robin Chapman’s two books are Learning To Talk (Fireweed, 1991) and The Way In (Tebot Bach, 1999). We are drawn into the poet’s world with her deft language and moving narratives. These are elegiac and redemptive poems of memory, both luminous and bittersweet, sometimes heartbreaking and sometimes hilarious. Also visit: http://robinchapmanspoemaday.blogspot.com/

 I Have Learned Five Things (Lake Shore Publishing, 1996), by Elaine Christensen, is a lovely book: poems of memory, especially childhood and her grandfather, poems of seasons, of love, of her children, poems of both celebration and sorrow, and two fine poems taken from Andrew Wyeth paintings. And the title poem is a winner!

Bitter Larder (New Spirit Press,1994), by Vivina Ciolli (aka Vivian Ackerman) and Consolation of Dreams (Talent House Press, 2001) are both prize-winning short chapbooks with well-crafted and elegant poems relishing the thrust of life, both in nature and in human love. There are several excellent form poems as well (sonnet, villanelle, sestina).

A Common Language (Lake Shore, 1995) is the NFSPS winning book for 1994 by Kathryn E. Clement. These are delicate but natural poems that range through a Wyoming childhood. Written in simple language and tight, well-crafted lines, they make a rich, durable collection that nourishes and sustains the reader.

Toronto poet David Clink brings us Come-on from the Horse on 7^th Avenue (believe your own press, 2002), The Surly Blondes of Earth (believe your own press, 2002) and His name was Gord and he used to run with the bulls (Junction Press, 2001). Even the chapbooks’ titles catch your attention and these poems make you laugh at life’s absurdities. They make you think and feel as well, with their strong images, manic energy, outrageous humor and empathy.

Joan Cofrancesco’s three books are Walpurgis Night (Sam Diego Poets Press, 1993), Cat Bones in the Trees (Hale Mary Press,1998) and Riding on Dragons (Hale Mary Press, 1999).. Irreverent and witty, these are original poems celebrating life in all its variations.

*While in the World (FootHills 2003) is a delightful book of poetry and flash fiction by Peter Conners. These pieces are filled with crisp ideas, sharp images and snappy music all set in contemporary language.

Nancy Kenny Connolly won the 2002 Main Street Rag chapbook contest with I Take This World (Main Street Rag, 2002), poems of her life in the culture of India as student, wife, mother and, finally, as visitor showing her daughter the land from which she came, a country much trans-formed and modernized. It is an engrossing story, the poems first-rate.

Edmund Conti"s Greatest Hits (Pudding House 2000) contains a dozen of this New Jersey poet’s famous light verse, including two one word poems. These twelve are very funny indeed.

*Venus On The Half-Shell(Small Poetry Press, 1996) is a 35 page chapbook of witty verse by Deborah P. Cooper who uses rhyme skillfully in these clever poems. Observations of a Dinosaur (Shadows Ink, 2004) and Chortle Blossoms (Shadows Ink, 2004) continue to mine similar territory with similar success as she follows in the footsteps of Carroll, Nash, Silverstein and Dr. Seuss.

*Robert Cooperman is a familiar name to readers of poetry and his fine books, In The Household of Percy Bysshe Shelley (University Press of Florida, 1993), In The Colorado Gold Fever Mountains (Western Reflections, Inc. 1999) and The Widow’s Burden (Western Reflections, 2001) display his vivid free-verse narrative persona poems at their very best. The former focuses on Shelley’s unconventional life while the latter two tell tales of settlers of the Old West. His latest is A Tale of the Grateful Dead (main Street Rag, 2004), a retelling of the Good Samaritan tale. All read like exciting novels while exhibiting skillful poetic craft.

The Cowbridge At Dawn (Edwin Mellen Press, 1992) and New England Weather (Edwin Mellen Press,1997) are the works of Page P. Coulter. They weave a magical blend of lyric and narrative poems bringing us closer to the natural world in its seasons of pruning and harvest, of growth and lying fallow.

*Pennsylvania poet Barbara Crooker is represented by nine chapbooks: Looking for the Comet Halley (Sunrust, 1987), The Lost Children (Heyeck Press 1989), Obbligato (Linwood, 1991,In The Late Summer Garden (H & H Press, 1998), Ordinary Life (Byline, 2001), Paris (sometimes Y publications, 2002), The White Poems (Barnwood, 2001), Greatest Hits (Pudding House, 2003) and Impressionism (Grayson, 2004). It’s hard to find a better poet than Barbara Crooker and these books are just wonderful in their imagery and metaphor, their sensuous vivid language and clarity of thought. She is also co-author, with Katharyn Howd Machan, of Writing Home (Gehry Press, 1983.)

I Am Woman by Rite (Samuel Weiser, 1995) by Nancy Brady Cunningham, is actually a book of women’s rituals with one or two of Nancy’s delicate spiritual poems highlighting each section, a total of 31 poems in all. This book would be especially meaningful to anyone with an interest in Wicca or Goddess spirituality.

The Deathbed Playboy (Eastern Washington University Press, 1999) and What’s Empty Weighs The Most (Black Dirt, 1997),a chapbook of 24 sonnets, show why Philip Dacey is held in such high esteem. He is, by turns, elegant and funny; Stephen Dunn praises his "unsolemn seriousness and rangy wit." and reviewers describe him as "a charmer, a fantasizer, a pyrotechnician in the child’s world of adult poetry." The San Francisco Review of Books states "Dacey’s work never fails to amaze."

Between One Future And The Next (Papier Mache Press, 1994) is by Ruth Daigon, the revered founder and former editor of Poets On. These are unsentimental, celebratory poems of clarity and authenticity dealing with everyday life. In Payday at the Triangle (Small Poetry Press, 2001), she retells the story of the famous 1911 fire in persona poems of survivors, combining these with photographs and newspaper reprints in a stirring collection.

Catherine Daly surprises us with the "trilogy" DaDaDa (Salt, 2003: UK), a hypnotically twisted love tome (208pages) which investigates the relation between language systems and the erotics of communication.

Night with Drive-By Shooting Stars (New Issues, 2002) is Jim Daniel’s latest collection. It looks unsparingly at his life, family, aging and the inevitable end of us all with a mixture of remembered joy, compassion and rage. His is a voice to trust, direct and clear, yet the poems are fresh as flowers.

Dreameater (Delaware Valley Poets, 1998) is the fifth collection by the talented Phebe Davidson. Naomi Shahib Nye describes her poems as "Dazzling orbits of attention, desire and presence…. her poems couple a sustained sense of regret with a forward-moving, compelling energy."

*Janine DeBaise brings us Of A Feather (Finishing Line, 2003), a delightful 30 page chapbook that tells tales from a western hiking trip: the strange new terrain, the birds, the cliffs and canyon, the brief relationship with a compelling man.

Christine Delea’s chapbook is Ordinary Days In Ordinary Places (Pudding House, 2000) Versatile as to subject matter, these poems possess fabulous titles, for example, one such is "The Hell With Tea and Pie at Denny’s," another is "After My Druggist Dreams of Apple Trees." Original poetry that made me wish the book were 82 pages instead of 28.

Einstein Considers A Sand Dune (Steel Toe, 2004) is the quirky title of James Doyle’s volume which won the 2003 Steel Toe Prize in Poetry. Delightfully imaginative, the poems in this collection play with time and timelessness, juggling opposites while indulging in some apt ironic humor. .

Ellen Dudley’s powerful poems are collected in her first book, Slow Burn (Provincetown Arts Press, 1997). This is brilliant, gutsy poetry revealing the intertwine of desire and violence. Ellen Dudley is also the founder and editor of The Marlboro Review.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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)..

Sherry Fairchok’s A Stone That Burns (The Ledge Press, 1999) won The Ledge annual chapbook contest in 1999. The "stone" in the title refers to coal and it is coal-mining that is the subject of this Bakers Dozen of direct yet lyrical narrative poems. She expands her focus in the full-length The Palace of Ashes (Cavan Kerry 2002) in a fine collection of resonant yet restrained poems, "a poetry of place and passion laced with loss and wonder."(Lawler)

At The Water Puppet Theater (Word, 2002) takes us through the Vietnam of poet Jim Fairhall’s soldiering youth and today’s modern Vietnam. This is a complex book with its generational history and its haunting, precise musical language.

Winner of the 1999 May Swenson Award was Patricia Fargnoli’s Necessary Light (Utah State University Press, 1999). Mary Oliver, in her introduction to the book, used the phrase "shimmering gladness" to describe the poet’s work; Brendan Galvin used the words "energy and wonder." Lives of Others, Volume 1 (#2) of Oyster River’s Walking to Windward Series, are narrative poems of what the title tells us, done with sensitivity and true empathy, a winsome 40 page chapbook. Now we have Small Songs of Pain (Pecan Grove, 2004), thirty seven transcendent, surrealistic meditations on Marc Chagall’s visual renderings of the fables of LaFontaine.

*Jim Ferris gives us unfaltering poems showing the power of our imagination to make sense of affliction in his humane and powerful The Hospital Poems, winner of the 2004 book award from Main Street Rag. This empathic memoir, so deeply personal, makes his suffering our own.

Timely Rhymes From The Sherman Sentinel (Singular Speech Press, 199) and More Timely Rhymes From The Sherman Sentinel (Singular Speech Press, 1995) are two collections of Henry George Fischer’s spritely, spirited, lyrical witticisms. Very, very clever – and very, very funny.

*Peggy Flanders’ chapbook, An Array of Textures (Threshold Press, 2004), is a collection of moving poems that are elegy and memorial to her mother, who died in 1995. A selection of these poems was awarded the Bruce Dearing Writing Award by the SUNY Health Science Center. .

A Needed Path (Black Willow,1982) is a twenty page chapbook containing the lovely formal verse of Harold Fleming, founder and former editor of the much-missed journal Black Willow.

Visible Bones (Plain View Press, 1998) is a plump cornucopia – 130 pages – of good poems by CB Follett. These poems, addressing both body and spirit, possess emotional depth, wit and inventiveness. In a direct and natural voice, she celebrates the ordinary world as well as giving us some fine and compassionate poems about adoption and family life. There is also a Greatest Hits (Pudding House, 2002) available.

Anne Carroll Fowler brings us Five Islands (Pudding House, 2002), set in her home state of Maine. These wonderful poems weave details of home life and seasonal landscape with the final illness of a close friend, yet are awash in hope and a celebration of both life and its earthly conclusion.

Joyce Frazeur’s The Bovine Affliction (Bear House,1991): This selection of nineteen exuberant, country-oriented free-verse poems is delightfully illustrated by Penelope Williams-Yaqub’s black and white drawings of cows.

Daughter (Small Poetry Press, 1996), is a chapbook of memory poems of and poems directed to the poet’s troubled daughter. Heartbreakingly tender and moving, poet Robert Funge weaves his spell around the reader. The Passage, a full-length collection followed in 2001 (Elo Publications) which expands his repertoire of subject matter but continues to stun us with themes of loneliness, and pulses with wisdom and compassion.

David Garrison is author of a fine chapbook, Blue Oboe (Wyndham Hall Press,1984) with charming pen and ink illustrations by David Leach. Garrison’s short poems are notable for breathtaking imagery set forth in delicate, precise language.

*Cheryl Gatling brings us a Springfed Chapbook, Stickley Wood (FootHills, 2004) filled with eighteen poems expressing the moving moments, both joyful and painful, of love and family life. These fine poems reflect a strong sense of place and the impact of societal and world events.

Reconciliation (Northwood Editions,2003) and A Gentle Shaking (Junction Books,2000) come from Canadian Adam Getty. I love Adam’s poetry, both for what it says and the wonderful way he says it, with clarity and wonder, direct yet shaded, quiet and contemplative, with last lines that grab your throat. Poet Patrick Lane says "I can taste Getty’s blood in every line, These are poems to remind us all of what it is to be alive in this most human of all worlds."

Teresa Gilman has two chapbooks from Foot Hills, Grass Stained and Wet to the Waist SpringFed Series, FootHills 2003), which has sold out, and its follow-up, Fumbling for the Flesh of Song (FootHills 2003), both filled with her signature sensuous imagery, evocative language, and ability to anchor her readers in the moment. Truly delightful!

*Elton Glaser is a stellar lyric poet, from his striking second collection, Tropical Depressions, which won the Iowa Prize in 1988, through Color Photographs of the Ruins (Pitt, 1992), and Winter Amnesties (Northern Illinois, 2000) to Pelican Tracks (Northern Illinois, 2003). Gritty and reverent, profound and comic, this Louisiana poet weaves classic poems that achieve stateliness without being the least bit stuffy, in his trademark mixing of high and low culture.

When The Grateful Dead Came To Saint Louis (Folly Cove, 997), by Charlotte Gordon, is another winner. The poet weaves wonderful stories in her precise and exciting narrative poems. The title poem for this chapbook won Second Place in The Comstock Review’s yearly contest the year it was entered.

On Second Thought (Fithian Press, 1992) is nonagenarian Daniel Green’s second full collection of poems, a remarkable feat for someone who wrote his first poem at 82. These narratives speak of an alert and thoughtful mind attuned to the vagaries and delights of the world around him. The book is illustrated by wife Leona, with whom he explores the globe.

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. 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.

Sonnets from South Mountain (Stanley Poetry Press, 2001) gives 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.

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.

Night Traveler (FootHills, 2003) is the long-awaited full collection of M.J. Iuppa’s superbly crafted and luminously gentle poems. Delicate explorations of how we negotiate the entanglements of responsibility and desire,, these poems give a fresh interplay of imagination and reality. Sometimes Simply (Foreseeable Future Press, 1996), and Temptations (FootHills, 2001) are two slender chapbooks of the poet’s work as well..

Totems (Basfal,1994) is a stunning book of wildlife photographs by Scott Ian Barry and poems by Michael Jennings to illustrate each animal. Timber wolves to crocodiles and the great horned owl, they are all here in thirty-five fine poems and photos.

Out Of The Ordinary (Impatiens Press, 1994) is Robert K. Johnson’s fourth book of poetry. The poems are in Johnson’s style of incisive directness and focus on daily life, family, marriage and his careers as both teacher and writer. There are also a number of excellent dramatic monologues.

Allison Joseph, the gifted African-American poet and editor of Crab Orchard Review, has four books here: Soul Train (Carnegie Mellon, 1997), In Every Seam (Pitt, 1997), Imitation of Life (Carnegie Mellon, 2003), and her newest, the prize-winning Worldly Pleasures (Word, 2004) are wry and bittersweet yet overall jubilant poems of memory about growing-up as a black girl in an urban neighborhood. These are wise, powerful, human.

Susan Kelly-DeWitt’s chapbooks include A Camellia for Judy (Frith Press, 1998) which brings us attentively exquisite nature poems, and Feather’s Hand (Swan Scythe Press, 2000) of which Marilyn Nelson says "Angels, saints and sages populate these very material, very quotidian, delightful poems, speaking in noisy inner voices the pained, humorous truths of our world."

Watermark Angels (Kings Estate Press, 2000) is the result of the collaboration of poet Ruth Moon Kempher and illustrator Wayne Hogan and what a zany, delightful collection it is. It deals with childhood, domestic matters, school days, myths and travels in novel and entertaining ways.

Natalie Kenvin’s Bruise Theory (BOA, 1995) is a brave book with a focus on abuse and sexuality. It is not, however, a grim book, but celebratory in tone. This is a book about survival by a master craftsman; imagery and metaphor are outstanding. The Foreward to this book is by Carolyn Forche.

Susan Deborah King brings us Tabernacle (Island Institute, 2001), poems of an island off the coast of Maine, complete with fog and blueberries, the country store and its varied inhabitants. These personal and intimate poems celebrate life and abound with wonderful metaphor and genuine love.

Wooden Windows (SRLR 1999)by Willie James King is a book of accessible, well-crafted poems of rural black life set in the South. These poems are direct and universal and touch us all.

*If Anything (Word Tech, 2004) is filled with Len Krisak’s graceful, urbane poems are outstanding examples of formal and stylistic breadth dealing with present-day themes, an exciting collection. His earlier collection, Even As We Speak (UEP 2000), recipient of the 2000 Richard Wilbur Award, also gives pleasure with its surprising metaphors and lively music.

Private Hunger (Akron, 2002) by Melody Lacina combines poems from her private childhood memory-album, travels through Europe, and concluding with a celebration of this earthly body and it’s capacity for life. Highly recommended.

E.J. Miller Laino’s Girl Hurt (Alice James, 1995)is an urgent book about surviving and recovery. These are truthful, beautifully crafted narrative poems of memory. "No Stone" is one of the finest mother-daughter poems I have ever read.

*Quraysh ali Lansana is the author or They Shall Run: Harriet Tubman Poems (Third World Press, 2004), persona poems telling the story of this remarkable woman who led so many slaves to freedom; many of the poems are told in her voice, others in the voices of slaves and their hunters: a truly remarkable book. Southside Rain (Third World Press, 1999) is his collection of lush urban song set in the streets of Chicago.

Shallow Graves (Random House, 1986) is the product of Wendy Wilder Larsen telling first the story of her life as a visitor in Vietnam during the early 1970's, then the life story of a Vietnamese woman, Tran Thi Nga, in clear and wonderfully readable narrative poems.

(reading a burning book) (Basfal, 1994) and A Drowning Man Is Never Tall Enough (Georgia, 1990) are by the ever-talented Patrick Lawler. His poems are verbally brilliant and the newer of the two books pushes the envelope as to what poetry is and can be. The section entitled "Light" is absolutely heart-stopping.

David Lawrence brings us Blame It On The Scientists (Pudding House, 2002), a chapbook of twenty-nine short often ironic poems that read like a cross between Bukowski and Perchik. Really unique.

In Salvaged Maxims (Word, 2002). poet Naton Leslie finds the maxims contained in a 1792 book of English legal commentary an occasion for all manner or meditations on contemporary subjects and the result, rendered in his smooth, elegant cadences, is by turns dark, humorous and haunting.

*Richard Levine writes poems about survival. In his 16 page chapbook, Snapshots from a Battle (Headwaters Press, 2001), the subject is the Vietnam War. His longer chapbook, A Language Full of Wars and Songs (Pollack Press, 2004), delves with a wider eye into all the complexities of life, with irony, whimsy, compassion, and protest. These are skillful, visionary poems.

Lyn Lifshin checks in with one of her earliest books, Black Apples (Crossing Press, 1973), Naked Charm (Illuminati, 1984) and Raw Opals (Illuminati, 1987), and her latest, Cold Comfort: Selected Poems 1970-1996 (Black Sparrow, 1997).. Wildly creative, dissecting family life and failed love relationships, Lyn Lifshin has been a popular poet for over thirty years. Sometimes her erratic use and non-use of punctuation confuses, but the poems are so profusely imaginative they’re hard to resist. Best of these is Cold Comfort, since it shows the scope of her work.

Deena Linett’s Rare Earths (BOA, 2001) is that rare poetry-novel that engrosses the reader instantly. The foreword, by Molly Peacock, describes it as "a subtle book of poems, daringly and deliberately constructed" and as a "page-turner." One of the best poetry books of 2001.

David Lloyd gives us the figure of Frank Sinatra as myth drawing other myths to it in The Gospel According to Frank (New American Press, 2003). Fred Chappell describes it as "daring, enjoyable, wryly ironic" in its employment of parable, proverb, anecdote and tall tale. And The Everyday Apocalypse (Three Conditions, 2002) won the 2002 Maryland State Poetry chapbook competition, complete with its varied subjects and marvelous sestinas.

Diane Lockward brings us Eve’s Red Dress (Wind, 2003), a generous collection of scintillating poems resonant with shrewdness and deep feeling. Kim Addonizio says "cognizant of loss, but always celebratory, Lockward’s poems are irreverent, ravenous for the world and unabashedly female." There is also a small chapbook, Against Perfection (Poets Forum, 1998), that sshow the poet’s wonderfully specific language, fascinating stories, and terrific last lines.

Joanne Lowery ‘s Leper Woman and other poems (March Street 2002), Sweat (Snark, 2003) and Poems That Work (Snark 2003) give us poems which are by turns humorous, heartbreaking, horrifying and absolutely unsentimental, running the imaginative gamut from the historical to the autobiographical. They concern memory and persistence and her consciousness of loss at the heart of experience: exciting and compelling and recommended.

How To Build An Owl and Other Poems (Small Poetry Press, 1995) is an award-winning twenty-nine page chapbook by Californian Kathleen Lynch. I recommend this chapbook highly. As Andrea Hollander Budy says in her review, the poet’s "commitment is to the language of the heart and to her hunger to understand both her own wildness and her responsibility to the things of the world." A new chapbook of Greatest Hits (Pudding House) came out in 2002.

*Ithaca poet Katharyn Howd Machan is well-represented by her new book Redwing: Voices from 1888 (Foothills, 2005), a compilation of all her Redwing poems; her fictional community of 19^th Century Redwing seems as real as my own hometown.. Chapbooks of her renowned verse include The Raccoon Book (McBooks, 1982, with pen and ink illustrations by Anita C. Nelson), Writing Home (Gehry Press, 1983, in conjunction with Barbara Crooker), Along The Rain Black Road (The Camel Press, 1986), From Redwing (Foothills Publishing, 1988), Belly Words (Sometimes Publications, 1994), The Flames They Are (Sometimes Publications,1998), Delilah’s Veils (Sometimes Publications, 1999), Skyros (Foothills, 2001), Dreaming How the House of Love Begins (Pudding House 2002) and Wise Woman (Anabiosis, 2003). These joyous poems celebrate the natural world and the strength of the human spirit, the beauty of dance, the power of womanhood.

R. Nikolas Macioci’s two books are Cafes of Childhood, Event Horizon Press, 1992),an expanded edition of the chapbook that won the 1991 Pearl chapbook competition, and Why Dance? (Singular Speech Press, 1996). The first of these is a harrowing story of abuse and survival, the second is a celebration of being alive in a wonderful, although fleetingly mortal, world. The poet combines words beautifully, like the paintings on a Grecian urn. He also has a Greatest Hits chapbook (Pudding House, 2001).

*In the Mixed Gender of the Sea, which won the Spire Press 2004 Poetry Book Award, and A Nickel Tour of the Soul (FootHills, 2004) are the most recent books from the pen of Jennifer MacPherson. Previous work includes two chapbooks, Stuck in Time (Pudding House , 2002) and Greatest Hits (Pudding House, 20001) and four books: As They Burn The Theater Down (Hale Mary, 1998), and the out-of-print"Cute & Perky, Slim & Sexy: A Poet’s Guide to Personal Ads (Mellon, 1996), Another Use for Husbands (Salt Fire, 1990) and To Attempt A Tower (1985).

In Susan Manchester’s Pouring Small Fire (Northwood Editions, 2003), "the personal and nature tableaux captured on the page buzz with their own intensity," says one reviewer. Molly Peacock describes the lyrical poems as both tart and dreamy and says "Manchester’s marvels will never leave you hungry." In Water Voices (Junction Books, 2000) the finely crafted, deceptively simple poems tell of her father’s death, her mother’s decline, and her own despair, all cloaked in the wonderful images and metaphor of pond, river, sea and rain, of sand and mud and frogs. Both books are lovely.

How They Got Here (Pudding, 1985) is a 22 page chapbook with a wide scope by Janet McCann. There are poems about nurserymen and gardeners, chain letters, travel, reunions, oil spills, divorced fathers, museums, instruction manuals, animals, ghosts.. Delightfully direct and fun to read and ponder.

Blessings The Body Gave (OSU, 1998) won the 1998 Journal Award in Poetry for Texas poet Walt McDonald and deservedly so. These strong narrative poems encompass his life history: his father’s death, memories of the Vietnam war, family love and ultimately survival, set in the sometimes harsh American West. And Counting Survivors (Pitt, 1995), an earlier book, mines the same fields equally well. McDonald is one of our national treasures.

Running the Voodoo Down (Elixir, 2003) won the third annual Elixir Press Book Award for Vietnam vet Jim McGarrah. As Victoria Redel says, "Here are bruised, shamed, restless elegies wrestling to give us a collection that is beautiful and unafraid of its own shadow." It is an intense, haunting book that packs a wallop.

Rescue (Backwaters Press, 2000), by Sally Allen McNall, won the 1999 Backwaters Prize and How To Behave At The Zoo And Other Lessons (State Street Press, 1997) was her prize-wining chapbook. The poems in Rescue are poems of intelligence and compassion which illumine the ordinary moment in daily life. They are also wise poems, constructed with skillful craft and rich clarity. This is definitely one of the best books of poetry to come out in 2000.

A Frieze Drawn Over Peace (1999) is Baldwinsville poet Ellen McNeal’s limited edition chapbook collecting her skillful ghazals centered around war in Serbia and a host of her wonderful peaceful garden photographs as contrast.

If I Could Know The Soul (Gemini Press,1996) is a long poem that comprises Lee D. Mendenhall’s 14 page chapbook. Lee is a master of formal verse and uses it effectively here.

*Ann E. Michael’s More Than Shelter (Spire Press, 2004) is an outstanding chapbook that retells the construction of a family home in rural Pennsylvania. The specificity of visual imagery and graceful metaphor are the hallmarks of this poetry.

Errol Miller’s Magnolia Hall (Pavement Saw, 2000) brings us poetry as southern as grits and gumbo voiced in a flowing non-narrative that is both imaginative and challenging.

Peggy Miller gives us Martha Contemplates The Universe (Frith Press, 1999), the runner-up in the 1998 Frith Press Chapbook Competition, and in this way gives us Martha, an unlikely heroine of her own dramas of everyday life. Clever and ironic yet tender in its treatment of the craziness in all of us, it is a delight. And in her Greatest Hits (Pudding House, 2003), longer, carefully crafted yet intense poems about science, time, ants, skin, stones, dust balls and fire balls, fill the pages with their themes of presence and absence.

Deep Freeze (BkMk Press, 1994) by Philip Miller is a fine yet dark collection, heavy with poems of loss, loneliness, and grief. The poems are intimate, understated, and thick with description. As Neal Bowers says, the poems are about difficult subjects: impasse, stasis and silence leading to quiet regeneration of the self.

How loss can shape and inform an adult life is the theme of Wendy Mnookin’s What He Took (BOA, 2002), Written from the persona of a 2 year old, these poems are lyrical and unpretentious. In To Get Here (BOA, 1999), haunting narrative poems about a loving family and an addicted son show how love can not always save us. An earlier book, Guenever Speaks (Round Table Publications, 1991), is a collection of dramatic monologues from characters in the Arthurian legends

Passion (Defined Providence, 1999) won the 1999 Defined Providence Chapbook Competition for poet Judith Montgomery. These lively, engaging lyrics are a fine mix of formal and free-verse, the subject being affairs of the heart. Fine examples of sonnet, villanelle and sestina.

The fancifully-titled chapbook Onion Festival Seeks Queen (Pudding House, 2002) by Melissa Montimurro, is labeled as "poems and prose-poems of hope, hunger and housekeeping" and it’s evenly divided between the two forms. The poet has a perceptive eye and a deft turn of language.

The Mouth of Home (Arctos Press, 1999) is the work of Janell Moon. These are unflinchingly honest personal poems that cover a broad range of topics. As one reviewer said, Janell Moon writes "with wicked humor and a compassionate voice."

*Ronald Moran gives us two chapbooks: Getting The Body To Dance Again (Pudding, 1994) and Fish Out Of Water (Juniper Press, 2000), and the new, full-length Saying These Things (Clemson 2004). This poet takes his inspiration from memory and keen observation to create crystal clear narratives and lyrics imbued by his fertile and outrageous imagination, lit with subtle humor.

All I Have Is A Fountain (Singular Speech, 1995) comes from the pen of Australian poet R.H. Morrison and it’s truly a garden: sixty pages of beautiful, lyrical, formal verse..

Chicago poet Simone Muench’s The Air Lost In Breathing (Helicon Nine, 2000) is one of the best collections of poetry to appear in the year 2000. To quote Marilyn Krysl’s review: "In these poems of longing and deliverance, passion and plenitude, Muench’s considerable artistry resonates in the depth of the female.. Hers is a feisty voice, insistent and prodigal, erotically grounded in the earthly body." And her use of language is purely wonderful.

The Fractured Emerald (Pathways Press, 1992), by Daniel P. Murphy, mines the rich familiar territory of childhood and family intertwined with Celtic legend and Irish charm. 68 pages.

Kate Murphy’s When We Thought of War (Pudding House, 2002) gives us stirring portraits from "modern" wars: the scenes of a family’s daily life in Kosovo, an American schoolgirl remembering air=raid drills of the Cold War, survivors of September 11. Outstanding poems that demand hope in spite of it all.

Sheryl Lynne Nelms brings us Friday Night Desperate (IM Press, 1996), a collection of erotically-charged poetry. As one reviewer puts it, "Sheryl Nelms dissects the night and human sexuality with the compassion of a poet and the power of a chain-saw," a good description of these lively, sharp-witted, lean poems dissecting the Dallas-Fort Worth bar scene. 60 pages.

A Stranger To The Land (Garden Street Press, 1997) comes from the pen of perpetual nomad Michael L. Newell and combines childhood memories with far-reaching poems of the Mid-east where he has taught for many years. Poet Benjamin Saltman describes Newell’s poems as being "celebrations and tributes, tight and straight," transforming sadness like the blues. 48 pages.

Barbra Nightingale’s Singing in the Key of L (NFSPS Prress,1999) is a sheer delight. Winner of the 1996 Stevens Poetry Manuscript Award, the poems are often surprising and scary, sometimes bawdy, and manage to be both funny and sad. Best of all, they are totally genuine. She also has a Greatest Hits (Pudding House, 2000) out, with a dozen of her best poems; only four are repeats.

*Ashes from a Long-Dead Fire (Salt Fire, 1989), A Deed to Precious Property (1986), and Parochial Habits (1983) come from the pen of Kathleen Bryce Niles and demonstrate her skill with narrative verse that reaches the heart, as she recounts the stories of neighborhood people, real and imagined, during both times of tragedy and the common miracles of everyday life. The first-mentioned book is a series of persona poems telling the story of the Collins Block fire.

Will Nixon’s chapbook When I Had It Made (Pudding House, 2001) consists of sixteen poems, some recounting childhood memories, others depict a more cotemporary life. Nixon writes in a discursive ramble that possesses its own unique appeal and he cherishes the particular.

Jeff O’Brien’s Trajectories (Fieldstone Press, 2000) preserves rural Pennsylvania in loving detail and accurately maps the territory of the heart at mid-point in well-crafted poems cpmbining precise diction and dexterous prosody.

*Kaleidoscopes (Main Street Rag Press, 1999) is Pam O’Brien’s delightful 44 page chapbook with its mix of classical mythology, personal history, love and family and dream written with clarity, tenderness and charm. And the follow-up, Paper Dancing (FootHills, 2004), continues her charming rewoven fables from the Brothers Grimm, and others. They are clever and witty and the sweetness never cloys.

June Owens’ Tree Line (Prospect Press, 1999) contains poems that flow effortlessly and musically, studded with wonderful imagery. Owens’ is a radiant yet unsentimental poetry that celebrates life, whether describing nature or home and family. One of 1999's best poetry books.

Barn Flight (Negative Capability Press) and the earlier Troy Corner Poems (Nightshade Press, 1994) are the work of Carolyn Page, former editor of Potato Eyes and co-founder of Nightshade Press. These are warmly-told narratives of the people and landscape of her beloved Maine.

What Part Motion Plays in the Equation of Love (Palanquin Press, 1999) is the intriguing title of Robert Parhan’s newest chapbook. These intelligent and carefully crafted poems have the same sort of edgy mystery as the title. 22 pages.

Delusions of Gander (1992) is Robert Paschell’s very witty collection of puntoons and wordplay; Robert is also the artist who drew the clever cartoons.

Sarah Patton’s new and collected poetry appears posthumously in Wizard’s Broom (Scopcraeft Press, 2003), which gives us a cornucopia of the astonishingly radiant lyric poems which I have long admired, with their delicate, lacy imagery, gorgeously rich, evocative language and launting lyricism. Previous books include The Roses (Light Source Press, 1991), My Voice Is The Gray Cat’s Music (Small Poetry Press, 1995), The Joy of Old Horses (Scopcraeft Press, 1999) and Sanctuary (Scopcraeft Press, 2000).These books are a treasure.

Seamless (Perugia, 2003), winner of the press’s award for 2003, is "the wise, complex and heartbreaking debut of a significant lyric poet," Linda Tomol Pennisi. These celebratory, radiant, sensuous and concentrated poems survey the boundaries of myth and reality.

Hands Collected (Pavement Saw, 2000) is a generous (500+ pages) collection of the poetry of Simon Perchik from 1949 through 1999. His mysterious and surreal untitled poems have a haunting loveliness in their imaginative and original treatment of the mythic fields of memory and desire.

Howl and Hosanna (Whelks Walk Press, 1997) gives us 103 pages of Joan Peternel’s vivid, fine-tuned verse. There are poems of formal elegance here, including sonnets blending seamlessly with her free-verse poems. Commentaries are included with each section.

Anonymous Or (Defined Providence, 2001) is Allan Peterson’s book of inventive, restless, searching poems that delve into our world of organized chaos while he searches for the true object behind the mirage. His metaphors are wonderful as he sorts out what being alive means. Small Charities (Panhandler Press, 1994) is a small chapbook of untitled stream-of-consciousness poems.

Again, the metaphors are stunning.

Bindweed (Ganders Knob Press, 1989), by the late Richard Hart Phillips, mixes clever verse with powerful lyrics of great beauty, adds some free-verse and haiku for variety, and comes up with this 97 page collection that celebrates the wonder of language.

Boston psychiatrist Ronald Pies has two chapbooks, Lean Soil (Pudding House 1985) and Riding Down Dark (Pudding House, 1992). These straightforward and well-written narrative poems are informed by the poet’s profession and often give us real people, troubled and hurting.

*Alchemy (Main Street Rag, 2004), White Linen (Nightshade Press, 1998) and Fishing With Tall Women (Persephone Press, 1996), which won the Fifth Persephone Press Book Award in 1996, are the work of North Carolina poet Diana Pinckney. These fine memory poems are chiseled and elegant, with striking imagery and metaphor.

Georgia Popoff’s poetry is represented by Coaxing Nectar from Longing (Hale Mary, 1997) These are clear and luminous poems of relationship and longing. Naomi Shihab Nye says "Clear, full of intimacy and conviction, these poems speak of love, childhood, family relationships, with fertile warmth and hope." And now there is a Greatest Hits (Pudding House, 2003), too.

The Perfect Day (Parallel Press, 1998) is Andrea Potos’24 page chapbook. These gentle and heart-filled poems of family draw their inspiration from the poet’s memory of her Greek grandparents.

Elaine Preston’s Look for a Field to Land (Bridge Works, 1994) explores survival in our unsettled times with evocative narrative poems that celebrate the endurance of the human spirit.

Still Life With Moving Fingers (Paradise Press, 1994) by Constance Pultz is a 22 page chapbook with movingly tender and wonderful dramatic and lyric poems. The endings of each poem are especially memorable.

Granite Dives (New Issues Press, 1999), by Margaret Rabb is another of the best poetry books to be issued in 1999. The poet masterfully uses the finest of formal verse to weave tales of domesticity and motherhood, love and nature. Whimsical, wise poems, each polished as a jewel.

*Sima Rabinowitz’ inventive The Jewish Fake Book, winner of the 2004 Elixir Press book award, combines narrative and lyric poems of myth and mysticism with prayer and meditation. The pain of history and the secrets locked within language are the subjects of this masterful collection.

*Ellen Rachlin hunts for permanence beneath an uncertain temporal world in her 25 page chapbook Waiting for Here (Finishing Line, 2004). These imagistic meditative poems shine with restive images, soft, assured rhythms and intimate diction.

Ancient Music (Pecan Grove, 2000) gives us a lovely 40 page chapbook by Geri Radacsi. In these elegant poems of archeology, sculpture and past times we encounter precise and joyful language.

By The Way (Buttonwood Press, 1998) is a collection of Illinois poet David Radavich with a wide range of theme and mood. The poems exhibit variety, rhythm and power in their stories of life’s journey, both outward and inward.

A Convert’s Tale (Pudding House, 2002) is Charles Rammelkamp’s collection of clever persona poems about religion, told mostly in the first person, the convert, and encompassing a variety of different faiths. Grace, guilt, faith, death and the afterlife.

Kangaroo Paws (Thomas Jefferson University Press, 1994) gives us poems written in Australia by the well-respected poet, David Ray: radiant yet unsentimental verse that is observant, keen and lyrical.

The Cartographer’s Tongue (White Pine Press, 2000) is Susan Rich’s recent prize winning book

whose fine lyric poems concern themselves with travel, history and politics. They range the entire world and are linguistically sensual, exact and generous.

*In her three books, Raking The Snow (Washington Writers Publishing House, 1982), Elegy for the Other Woman (Signal Books, 1996), and The Arc of the Storm (Signal Books, 1998) and one chapbook, Wild Garlic (Big Easy Press, 1995), poet Elisavietta Ritchie gives us exuberant, vital poems that manage concurrently to be both abstract and immediate. She uses terrific imagery. The Arc of the Storm is a special treat, a cornucopia of 174 pages of poetry varied in content and tone.

Bertha Rogers’ Sleeper, You Wake (Edwin Mellen, 1991)gives us 74 pages of Rogers’ wonderful nature poetry accompanied by her own pen-and-ink illustrations.

Farmwife (Nightshade Press, 2000) won the 1999 William & Kingman Page Poetry Award for poet Susan Roney-O’Brien. These are narrative poems of clarity, deceptively simple and very observant of both the natural and spiritual worlds and the ties between them.

Rose Rosburg’s Breathe In, Breathe Out (Singular Speech Press) takes us traveling through Europe and Asia in honest poems that reflect her understanding of the human heart.

The talented poet and reviewer Liz Rosenberg gives us three books, Children of Paradise (Pitt, 1994), These Happy Eyes (Mammoth 2001), and The Fire Music (Pitt, 1986), which won the 1985 Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize.As C. K. Williams says, "An intelligent, sophisticated and sensible sensitivity informs these poems and a keen sense of passion illuminates them." I concur.

Half The Story (March Street Press, 1997) is a 43 page chapbook that recalls poet Geri Rosenzweig’s Irish childhood in these radiant poems of memory and the natural world. She follows this with the terrific God Is Not Talking (Pudding House, 2002), 22 poems using knife as the central metaphor.

What Men Talk About (Pudding House, 2000), by Charles Rossiter, won the 1999 Red Wheel Barrow Award. This is the best of Applied Poetry and has both clarity and charm. 33 pages.

*M.A. Schaffner brings us rueful, smart, unsentimental yet moving meditations in his The Good Opinion of Squirrels (Word Works, 1996). There is dark humor here, and carefully crafted formal poems of great skill dot the lyric narrative landscape of insightful free verse.

Another Life (Small Poetry Press, 1997), by Lin Schlossman, is a 47 page chapbook of her finely wrought poems of memory and personal history in both free and formal verse. There are some really fine sonnets here.

*Penelope Scambly Schott gives us one chapbook, Wave Amplitude in the Mona Passage (Palanquin, 1998) and three books: Her latest, The Pest Maiden: A Story of Lobotomy (Turning Point, 2004),a harrowing book-length narrative about mental illness, tells the story of a distant relative’s confinement with accuracy and grace. The Perfect Mother (Snake Nation, 1994), won the first Violet Reed Haas Prize. Penelope, The Story of the Half-Scalped Woman (Univ. of Florida, 1999), is a brilliant tour-de-force retelling a 17^th Century tale as narrative poetic sequence. The poet has a fine ear for language and her lyric poems have a musical flow. They are also honest, ironic, brimming with humor and tenderness.

Michael Scofield treats us to Silicon Valley Escapee (Amador, 2000). And it is a treat with his often humorous, sometimes grim, pictures of modern urban life, a story with a happy ending: a move to Santa Fe and eventual retirement. These are great fun to read, somewhat ruefully.

What The Light Has Shown (Edwin Mellen, 1996) is Syracuse Poet Marilyn Shelton’s deeply affecting sequence of poems about grief at her mother’s illness and death, transcendence and finally, the Lithuanian heritage that has been passed on to her. Luminous.

When There Is No Shore (Word Press, 2002) and Devil’s Lane (Negative Capability Press, 1996) collect some of the prize-winning Vivian Shipley’s accurate and persuasive narrative poetry. Her clear, expansive joyous verse focuses on family life and relationships. The poet is also editor of the esteemed Connecticut Review.

*Enid Shomer has authored four collections of poetry: Stalking the Florida Panther (Word Works, 1987), This Close to the Earth (Arkansas, 1992), Black Drum (Arkansas, 1997), and Stars at Noon (Arkansas, 2001), which gives voice to the first woman to fly faster than sound. Hers is a poetry of image and metaphor that open to startling leaps of association, of beautifully wrought formal verse and elegant, passionate lyrics.

Syracuse poet Helen Shrier has a 36 page chapbook , The Gleam of Open Doors (1994), and a full collection, Stones In The Bridge (Mellen Poetry Press, 1998), subtitled A Jewish Woman’s Crossing. These Biblically-based poems sing like psalm and prayer. Helene excels at bringing the reader fully into her tender, real poems , whatever their subject, and making the reader care.

Shoshauna Shy is author of the 24 page chapbook Souped-Up on the Must-Drive Syndrome (Pudding House, 2000).. These poems reflect our hectic lives where the world is halfway to chaos and not even our homes are safe havens of rest. The poet has a keen, observant eye.

Stereopticon (Threshold Press, 2000) is poet and artist Michael Sickler’s 32 page limited edition chapbook. This collection reflects the diversity of this poet’s multi-layered poetry. The skillful layout of the poems adds to the dramatic effect of each gem-like poem.

Ithaca composer and poet Ann Silsbee’s chapbook, Naming The Disappeared (Vista Periodista 2001) is a collection of portrait poems set in nine, or multiples of nine, lines. The language and imagery are both delicate and charmingly precise and the layout reflects the poetry perfectly. Orioling (Red Hen, 2003) won the Benjamin Saltman Award, As poet Tom Lux writes, it "is a beautiful title for a beautiful and deeply human book of grace, skill and passionate involvement in the world." The Book of Ga (Custom Words 2003) is an imaginative biography of the poet’s grandmother (and Muse) told through varying points of view. These beautifully crafted poems manage to blend meditative lyrics within a rich narrative context. They are intimate, sensual, grateful and wise. These two books are among the best to appear in 2003.

Buried Bones (FootHills 2004, Springfed Chapbook #30) is Mary McLaughlin Slechta’s first chapbook. A review describes this poetry as "mesmerizing" and so it is. It goes on to say, "She delves into the body and memory, racism and sexism, and gets to the other side."

Outside the Kremlin (Nightshade Press, 1996) won the 1995 winner of the William & Kingman Page chapbook award\ for poet Margo Solod.. Vivid imagery and well-controlled use of form mark these poems in this fast-paced and attention-grabbing story of a two month visit to Russia during the tumultuous autumn of 1993.

Beyond Flight (1986) is a 24 page limited edition chapbook of love poems by Syracuse poet Mary Stebbins and art work by Gregory K. Williams. These poems of shattered dreams are built on the wonderful nature metaphors that this poet is famous for -- a painful, totally honest book.

Drawing Water (Bull Thistle Press, 1992), is a small collection of wonderful poetry by F. Bjornson Stock. Although its overall range of subject is wide, most spectacular are the poems about the poet’s troubled relationship with his father.

Virgil Suarez’ You Come Singing (Tia Chucha, 1998) contains high-octane, feverishly energized poems that cut to the bone and heart of memory and recollection as they speak of the dislocation and alienation born of exile. An original and exciting collection.

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.

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.

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.

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.

*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.

Desire Vail’s three chapbooks are See How Wet The Street Sounds (FootHills Publishing, 1992), First Shine of Dawn (FootHills Publishing, 1996) and In The Fold Of A Hill (FootHills Publishing, 2000). These lovely poems focus on the aural: on the sounds of nature, and on living a full life without the sense of sight.

Ryan G. Van Cleave brings us three prizewinners: Say Hello (Pecan Grove, 2000), The Florida Letters (Dream Horse Press, 2001) and The Tallahassee Letters (Concrete Wolf, 2003). In the latest book, he writes with the voice and style of numerous contemporary poets who is named in each title. These narrative yet lyrical poems are smart, funny, and imaginative.. To quote Charles Harper Webb, he :"tells a good story and tells it vividly. His images have punch. His words crackle with energy." And there is compassion for all of us as we stumble through our lives.

Heartwood (Texas Tech, 2000) won the 1999 Walt McDonald First Book Award six months after the death of its creator, Miriam Vermilya. To quote from poet Rodney Jones’ review, "Her poems combine elegance and vulnerability, profundity and whimsy... they lift from the page to enter the bloodstream with a simplicity and grace that bespeak both momentary passion and enduring wisdom. Heartwood is a nearly perfect book." I concur. This book is gentle yet witty and wise.

Dragon Lady:Tsukimi (Riverstone, 1999), by Martha Modena Verteace, won the 1999 Riverstone Poetry Chapbook Award.. These love poems, set in Chicago, have overtones of goddess ritual, and Native American respect for nature. Nature continues to dominate Light Caught Bending (Diehard, 1995) and Second Mourning ( Diehard). Great exactitude of language and clarity mark this poet’s work.

To Live on this Earth (West End Press, 2002), poet Ken Waldman has turned his personal life into music, as he writes movingly of frozen streets, plane wrecks, back country dance halls, fiddling, love letters : all the sights and sounds of the Alaska he lives in and loves.

Thom Ward’s Small Boats with Oars of Different Size (Carnegie-Mellon, 2000) is, to quote poet Stephen Dunn, "an impressive debut by a poet who makes his language thump while it names and probes." These high-spirited, good-humored yet romantic poems enchant the reader. Tumblekid (Devil’s Millhopper, 1998) and Greatest Hits (Pudding House, 2001) are two earlier chapbooks that continue to enchant.

In The Price of Everything (Mellen Poetry Press, 2001), Gail White’s first full-length collection, we find the hallmarks that have made this poet so widely-published over the years: humor, warmth, intelligencc, a perceptiveness about the human condition, and touches of irony, all couched in precise language, many set in formal prosody done so skillfully that the reader may be unaware of its use. One of the best to come out in 2001.

Longs Peak (Chestnut Hills Press/Brick House, 1998) by octogenarian activist Chester Wickwire, casts a rueful and affectionate eye at his own history. These poems embody courage, conviction, humor and simple grace. The Wonder Horse (Chestnut Hills, 2000) continues the saga.

Jill Williams’ The Nature Sonnets (Gival Press, 2001) is a set of twenty-four winsome sonnets. A mixture of the poignant and cheeky, these well-crafted sonnets are refreshingly ironic.

Alive Beyond Blue (Mellen Poetry Press, 1996) is Thomas B. Williams’ collection of gentle, finely-etched and often mysterious poems of the natural world told with a clear singing voice.

Mary Winters has a chapbook, Grace Itself Invisible (Pudding House, 1994) and a book, A Pocket History of the World (Nightshade Press, 1996), both filled with her wry and trenchant observations of the world and its doings. These slightly surreal poems have a sting to their wit but are never without compassion as well.

*Desperate Acts & Deliveries, by Scott Withiam, won the 2004 Two Rivers Review Chapbook competition. These are quirky poems and prose poems ranging in subject from dental anasthesia to Ariadne myths, Ovid, Mary Cassatt paintings, ducks, missing hikers, and more. Intriguing.

Carolyne Wright ‘s first collection, Stealing the Children (Ahsahta, 1978), are poems of imagination, landscape and faith. From A White Woman’s Journal (Water Mark 1985) ccollects some poems of her Peace Corps experience. Her Blue Lynx Prize winning Seasons of Mangoes and Brainfire (Lynx House, 2000), explodes into a multiple reflection on cultures, flesh and mind in surefooted narrative poems of imagistic precision and keen clarity, a compelling documentary of the human spirit brilliantly seen and passionately rendered. Carolyne also has a chapbook of Greatest Hits (Pudding House, 002)

Nancy Means Wright’s fine chapbook, Walking Up Into The Volcano (Pudding House, 2001) gives us warm poems of home and family, the first section dealing with childhood memories, the second part with more recent events, poems about her own daughters.

The Snake Charmer’s Daughter, by Pittsburgh-based poet Michael Wurster, contains the motional joy, pensive dreaming, and lyrical denunciation of violence for which this poet is noted. This is a book of wonder, urgency and grace.

Winner of the 1996 Washington Prize, George Young’s Spinoza’s Mouse (Word Works, 1996) is a book of powerful, moving, and intelligent poems. Ron Wallace says, "With a meticulous precision, a passionate imagination, a quirky curiosity, George Young casts a physician’s eye on Oliver Hardy’s bones, Shelley’s funeral, Hopkins’ hands, Rembrandt’s head, Thoreau’s grave, Mozart’s corpse, and finds therein beauty, terror, grace, ecstasy, love. Young is a true original and Spinoza’s Mouse a book of wonders, a wonder of a book." I concur.

Jim Young’s Visions (1994) collects poems of memory, love, nature, and his first-hand knowledge of illness and mortality in a mix of both formal and free-verse. These are poems of courage and a brave spirit lit by the wisdom of age.

Gunner’s Moon (Cider Press, 1996)is a 32 page chapbook collecting Roy Zarucchi’s unflinching poems of the Viet Nam War drawn with such an incisive eye to detail that we are reminded again of the agonies of war and absence. A strong and vital collection.