UC Riverside

This is a collection of poems. Many, but not all, are narrative; many, but not all, are formal, or use meter to some effect. The goal of the majority of these poems is to accomplish some sort of movement, a thematic or emotional arc, so the final lines act like a hinge-trap snapping shut- so they punch you in the guts, or leave you high.

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., in his foreword for Anne Sexton's Transformation's, calls language extension a "neat" goal for poetry, but admits "it didn't make me grateful in my bones for poets. Language extenders I can take or leave.

"Anne Sexton does a greater favor for me: she domesticates my terror, examines it and describes it, teaches it some tricks which will amuse me, then lets it gallop wild in my forest once more.

"She does this for herself, too, I assume. Good for her."

I couldn't say it better.