The Salt House: A Summer on the Dunes of Cape Cod

Cynthia Huntington.  Hanover: UP of New England, 1999. $22.00

     The Salt House, by Cynthia Huntington, is more than a walk on the beach.  Part memoir, part nature writing, the first volume of prose by this gifted poet is testimony to the value of transient experience, an ode to time and space set apart from the normal course of activity.  The time remembered is one summer when Huntington and her artist husband were newlyweds.  The space is a cramped twelve-foot by sixteen foot shack on the backwater sand dunes of Cape. . .

The Long Surprise

Barbara Lau.  Huntsville: Texas Review Press, 2001. $12.95

     Barbara Lau's first book of poetry, The Long Surprise, winner of the X. J. Kennedy Poetry Prize, promises surprise in its title, and its poems do not disappoint.  Even the titles contain surprises: "The Incredible Weight of Being," "Regarding Jean's Decision Not To Reconstruct Her Breasts," and "It Was Nothing Like an Abortion" are some startling examples  Some of these poems descend upon her readers like powder-thin flakes of snow; others pelt readers like sleet, soaking us beneath our skin. . .

Prague

Arthur Phillips.  New York: Random House, 2002. $24.95

     . . .Arthur Phillips debut novel does not feature Antonin Votava.  In fact, Prague, the story of a group of American expatriates in 1990s Easter Europe, is not even set n Prague, but in Budapest instead.  It is by now means an unreadable novel.  And Phillips certainly isn't a bad novelist.  In fact, for a debut novel, Prague is pretty good.

     Prague is the story of an "unlikely" group, "pieced together. . .from parties and family references. . .

In the Library of Silences:    Poems of Loss

Mary Sue Koeppel.  Eau Claire, Wisconsin: Rhiannon, 2001. $7.00

     . . .All of the poems that make up In the Library of Silences are image- driven.  Just as William Carlos Williams would have had it, Koeppel relies on things to get her ideas across.  The poems are also accessible, in congruence with Koeppel's goal of wakefulness and clarity. Her images, and their attendant emotions and understandings, stick with the reader.  The are original and evocative: a girl is called upon to help her mother bury a miscarriage, captured in a canning jar. . .

For the Short Haul

Karen Solie.  Toronto: Stoddart, 2001. $14.00

      Karen Solie knows how to entice, then swiftly ensnare, her reader.  The poems in her first collection swagger into the room wearing titles like "Searching for Freud," "Why I Dream of Helicopter Crashes," and "Panic in Four Parts."  Smart, funny, and tough-minded, Solie is at home with Plato, but what's equally enchanting is her brash comfort with the seamier side of life.  Her  poems inhabit roadside diners, humid motels, and seedy cocktail lounges malingering along the edges of sleepy Canadian. . .

A Multitude of Sins

The Salt House: A Summer on the Dunes of Cape Cod

The Long Surprise

Prague

In the Library of Silences: Poems of Loss

For the Short Haul

Home

Staff

Current

Readings

Mission

Reviews

Guidelines

Subscribe

Ads