The Extraordinary Tide
Copyright © 2001
by Susan Aizenberg
Columbia University Press
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A collection of more than 400 poems by more than 100 different writers,
The Extraordinary Tide synthesizes and celebrates a new era of
poetry by women in America. Long overdue, the anthology includes America’s
most recognized women poets and those emerging as exciting new artists of
contemporary verse. The book also contains a forward by poet Eleanor Wilner
and short biographies of all the contributors. — from the jacket
An extraordinary and important anthology that anyone interested in
contemporary American poetry will want to read and cherish. — Alan
Shapiro
The delights of this anthology are in its plurality, its collection of
such a rich and varied sampling of that tide flooding
American shores. —
Eleanor Wilner
Reluctant as American poetry has been to embrace its own majority, the
almost inestimable variety, abundance, and accomplishment of this anthology
makes one shudder to think how half-hearted our national literature would
be without the voices that are gathered here. It’s as if, at last, Eurydice
had cleared the vast silence of the underworld, and in so doing she has
fashioned a music that enlarges the voice in all of us. — Sherod
Santos
Stunning in its accomplishment and breathtaking in scope, The
Extraordinary Tide is an anthology like no other: rather than merely
defining some very particular territory, the work of the women writers
gathered herein in fact gorgeously illuminates all of contemporary American
letters. — Rafael Campo
One had hoped that by this time there would be no need for an
anthology like The Extraordinary Tide: New Poetry by American
Women, but its existence testifies to the continuing negative gender
politics of poetry. ... anyone who has doubted the
richness of poetry by women in the U.S. will no longer be able to
do so. — Publishers Weekly
The Extraordinary Tide: New Poetry by American Women unequivocally hits its mark.
Read it as a textbook of contemporary poetry. Or read it as a comprehensive collection
of women poets. ... The women included in this book may all rise from the same chromosomal
wellspring, but the way each asserts herself as a poet could not be more diverse. The
Extraordinary Tide is an important
book beyond its gender specific objective and because of it. — Prairie Schooner
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Muse
Copyright © 2002
by Susan Aizenberg
Southern Illinois UP
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Clearly Susan Aizenberg has chosen to serve the most
demanding of the nine muses, Clio, the muse of history. Aizenberg honors
her with rich and vital poems of personal history, elegy, and what could
be called Lyrics of the Long Haul– poems of the middle years, poems
which testify to the difficulties of grace and the precious arrival of
wisdom. This is an elegant and sustained volume. More importantly, it is
an instructive one. — David Wojahn
How can art and life coexist? This is one of the big
questions that Susan Aizenberg raises in the superbly crafted, deeply
felt poems of Muse. From a beautiful elegy for the poet Lynda Hull to a
brilliant sequence on Vivian Eliot, we are moved by narrative, delighted
by the music of speech, and dazzled by glittering imagery. But ultimately
Aizenberg forces us to confront disturbing questions about how the
aesthetic can be reconciled with the ethical. She faces these questions
unflinchingly. They are the heart of her enterprise. A real,
three-dimensional human being emerges out of the phrasing, images, and
the thoughts of these memorable poems, shaped out of words but entangled
in the gritty detail of ordinary life. — Maura Stanton
Miraculous ... her muse is most benevolent. — Denise Duhamel,
Painted Bride Quarterly
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Peru in Take Three: 2
Copyright © 1997
by Susan Aizenberg
Graywolf Press
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Featured in this welcome second volume in the series are collections by
three poets who have contributed to AGNI's
biannual journal, Susan Aizenberg,
Mark Turpin, and Suzanne Qualls. Aizenberg ... displays a haunted, weary
wonder in "Art" — "I don't know how to make things
/ ordinary anymore, though I
dress and go to work / each day as if the world
were ordinary ... carefully / rounded
characters strolling bucolic paths, / safe beneath lucid
trees." Also striking is "Grand Street," which focuses on a homeless woman
amid Christmas shoppers in New York. ... Internal and external sight lines
unite this sampler, which delivers further on the promise of the
Take Three series. — Publishers Weekly
This book, second in the series of Agni's
introductions, includes the work of three vibrant, emerging poets: Susan
Aizenberg ("Peru"), a New York-to-Nebraska transplant and current
editor of The Nebraska Review; Mark Turpin ("Nailer"), a California
carpenter poet; and Suzanne Qualls ("Beauty, and Instinct"), a
performance artist who is also from California. You'll be moved and
entertained by Aizenberg's startlingly lyrical imagery, Qualls's wicked
sense of closure, and Turpin's wise observations spiked with
wit. — "Recommended Book," Small Press Editor, Amazon.com
The AGNI New Poets Series delivers again
with this three-fer-one. My favorite here is Susan Aizenberg, mostly
because she writes so vividly about how our family histories infuse
every page of our lives. ... this is one of the best poetry bargains to be
found. — "Recommended Book," Poetry Editor, Amazon.com
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What the Critics Say
Bibliography
