The Uneaten Carrots Of Atonement [Paperback]

Diane Lockward, more than any other poet now writing,?exemplifies Garcia Lorca's definition of poet as the professor of the five bodily senses. She revels in sensory language, often lip-smacking language, and she can make the language of terror and loss as spine-tingling as the beauty of a last stab of sunset before it disappears. The Uneaten Carrots of Atonement, with its cryptic title, invites us to join her in nothing less than a poetic banquet where we are seduced by the Red of the raspberry, its drupelets a nest of sexual seeds, / and the music, pepper hot and red, ?or challenged by the never-ending unwinding of Lockward's interior landscape seeking its exterior expression in the physical world around her: I?build?a nest of silken floss / and tiny twigs, /?watch the lives?on the other side. Make no mistake, though,?the artistic weaving in these poems is tough as knots that hold their weight, that won't come undone. This book is a feast to which Garcia Lorca himself would give a five-star rating. ?

??????????? Kathryn Stripling Byer, North Carolina Poet Laureate, 2005-2009?