What the Critics Say About Grace Bauer BEHOLDING EYE FIELD GUIDE TO THE INEFFABLE THE HOUSE WHERE I'VE NEVER LIVED RETREATS AND RECOGNITIONS UMPTEEN WAYS OF LOOKING AT A POSSUM WHERE YOU'VE SEEN HER THE WOMEN AT THE WELL

Beholding Eye Copyright © 2006 by Grace Bauer Custom Words How to Buy

Grace Bauer turns the power of her own piercing gaze onto the world of art in her stunning new poetry collection Beholding Eye. The worlds of art and artifice, the creative life and created lives: nothing escapes her scrutiny. Beholding Eye is a wonder to behold. — from the publisher Grace Bauer, in her brilliant new book of ekphrastic poems, deploys the voices of artists and their subjects to consider matters of identity, power, class, anger, and erotics. With her usual high wit, the poet revises the location and meaning of worth and beauty. Bauer's formal skill serves to illuminate the 'thick and pungent' paint caked on the hands of the maker, as well as the 'civility and containment' we must shun to enter 'A-R-T' — which is what this book does after all: enters its subject to become pure art. Brava! — Hilda Raz, editor of Prairie Schooner and author of Trans If Browning's Last Duchess were to step out of her canvas and begin reading Walter Benjamin on art and late-stage capitalism, she might produce a book similar to Grace Bauer's Beholding Eye. These smart, funny ekphrastic poems surprise the reader on every page and surprise anew with each rereading. What Bauer says of Duchamp's Nude Descending a Staircase could pertain equally well to her own poetry: it is 'designed to disrobe the viewer / . . . to change /forever how we see.' — Julie Kane, author of Rhythm and Booze Anne Sexton, Elizabeth Bishop, Carolyn Kizer — let them make room for Grace Bauer. Sexton's equal in sardonic vision, Bishop’s equal in the music of speech, Kizer's equal in rapier wit. ... I, for one, will try to read every word that this woman writes. — Will Slattery in ONTHEBUS Just a couple of her titles from poems in her latest effort, Beholding Eye, give the reader a hint of the high wit involved in her intelligence: "She Calms the Savage Beast With Her Aubade," and ""She Thinks She Smells a Bad Metaphor." Many of these poems are the ultimate reviews of artworks, which are art themseslves. They stake out a territory, huge in imagination, bold in risks, and beautiful in what the eye beholds or thinks it does. Grace Bauer is also sure about her wordplay and realistic about all our expectations of romance. No one will likely be tempted to ask this woman: so what else can you do with words? — Reader Views There are numerous small touches in Beholding Eye to recommend it; Bauer sees paintings with uncommon clarity, and her impersonations of different characters are vivid. — Bookslut

Retreats and Recognitions Copyright © 2007 by Grace Bauer Lost Horse Press How to Buy

All one has to do is read "Note From the Imaginary Daughter," the first poem in Grace Bauer's Retreats and Recognitions, and you'll be caught in the grip of psychological drama and an evocative imagination that will make you want to read further. Bauer's poems probe the dark landscapes between impression and apprehension, the past and its repetition though imaginative transformation, impulse and restraint. Her delivery is tough and terse; her imagery is fresh and often startling. There is experience and authority in her voice. She can be immensely witty, as in "Plot Lines," where she improvises on the word, tale, or virtuoso as in her intricate sestina, "A Little Like Dorothy." Succinct, like "Awakened By the Fall," and evocative, like "Lunacy." Her poems are poignant, intelligent, and believable. Poetry lovers, read this book! — Robert Pack, author of Elk in Winter and Composing Voices, and final judge for the Idaho Prize for Poetry 2006 Grace Bauer has a rare power: whether it is the appearance of Mormon missionaries at her door or finding an answer to an eight year old boy's question, "What's Nebraska?" she transforms life into perfect poems. In this collection, her poems connect to the world through personal history (days spent in Nebraska, New Orleans, and Greece) and popular culture (Blanche Dubois, Norma Jean Baker and Dorothy, formerly of Oz, all make guest appearances) in ways that combine the comic and the elegiac. In the wonderful poem "Revising My Vita," she examines her life through the lens of that ship's log of academic career, the CV, and finds "life is a course of study I will/ never really be sure I've passed." All the strong poems in Retreats & Recognitions are grounded in the reality of detail, though Bauer is smart enough to realize how often the real mimics the surreal in a world where Krishnas cruise Bourbon Street. Retreats & Recognitions is a book where memory and imagination converge. — Jesse Lee Kercheval "The bad boys inside good girls" hurrah Bauer's new book where a crucifix bonks Mom on the head and "the road to ruin looks scenic." You lucky reader, you. — Terese Svoboda

Umpteen Ways of Looking at a Possum Copyright © 2006 by Grace Bauer Xavier Review Press How to Buy

Umpteen Ways of Looking at a Possum examines and celebrates the life and work of legendary New Orleans poet Everette Maddox. Maddox, who taught poetry at University of Alabama, Xavier University, and University of New Orleans, is well known throughout the region for his colorful, idiosyncratic poetry, as well as the organizer and master of ceremonies for a long-running series of open mike poetry readings at New Orleans's equally storied Maple Leaf Bar. The readings continue today, seventeen years after Maddox's untimely death in 1989. Maddox's poetry, which appeared in The Paris Review, The New Yorker, and other literary magazines, was collected in The Thirteen Original Poems (1976), The Everette Maddox Song Book (1982), Bar Scotch (1988), and the posthumous collections American Waste (1993) and Rette's Last Stand (2004). Editors Julie Kane, a professor of English at Northwestern State University, Natchitoches, Louisiana, and Grace Bauer, professor of English at University of Nebraska, Lincoln, knew Everette Maddox and his circle, and have gathered together an impressive array of writers for this book. Among them are RS Gwynn, Ralph Adamo, Randolph Bates, Ken Fontenot, Nancy Harris, Rodney Jones, David Kunian, William Lavender, Doug MacCash, William Matthews, Sharon Olinka, Randall Schroth, Gail White, Stan Bemis, Steve Brooks, George Burton III, Maxine Cassin, Christopher Chambers, Carlos Colon, Peter Cooley, Joel Dailey, Louis Gallo, Michael Greene, William Harmon, Karen Head, Harry de la Houssaye, Fred Kasten, William Maddox, Martha McFerren, Christopher Munford, Kay Murphy, Spike Perkins, Manfred Pollard, JC Reilly, Louie Skipper, Robert Stock, Leon Stokesbury, Helen Toye, Gail White, Carolyne Wright, Ahmos Zu-Bolton II, Ellen Gilchrist, Richard Katrovas, Katheryn Krotzer LaBorde, Bill Roberts, Vicki Salloum, Richard Kilbourne, Errol Laborde, and Susan Larson. — from the publisher

The Women at the Well Copyright © 1997 by Grace Bauer Portals Press How to Buy

Robert Graves said Jesus came to declare war on the Female and all her works; I say Grace Bauer has come to fight back. — Martha McFerrin In The Women at the Well, Grace Bauer sings out of silence alternative stories of the Biblical women she first encountered as a schoolgirl listening to the nuns. Wry humor is only one element of Bauer's illuminating re-vision as she inhabits her women in their longing, sassiness, rebellion, compassion, wavering, and triumph. She lets them like each other — Rachel and Leah reconcile — and lets them relish their bodies — Mary complains about never "knowing pleasure." She creates The Prodigal Daughter who, like Woolf's Judith Shakespeare, experiences a vastly different fate from her male counterpart's. But unlike poor Judith, this daughter survives and bears her own girl child....I had my favorites among Bauer's women, and you will too. Whoever they are, the Bible will never be the same. — Carole Simmons Oles "And I know what courage it takes / to tell it right," says Lilith in Grace Bauer's fiesty retelling of stories based on the Old and New Testaments. Funny, wry, always suprising and smart, Bauer's women get it right and speak for us in the tradition of revisionist mythmaking we cherish these last days of the twentieth century. Read The Women at the Well. You'll like it. — Hilda Raz Reading [The Women at the Well] is like entering a roomful of fascinating women that you thought you already knew, only each one now takes you aside to share some new facet of herself about which you previously had no clue. — Barbara C. Ewell

Bibliography Selection Buy a Book Grace Bauer's Page Writers On-Line

Return to The Rock

Nebraska Center for Writers