Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
This much-needed retrospective of the 30-year career of this beloved, if too little known, poet selects from all of Gregg's published books--from her 1981 debut Too Bright to See to 2006's In the Middle Distance--including a group of new poems that show her ongoing investigations into the inner intensities of everyday brutality and grace. Gregg's poems oscillate between hushed reminiscence and savage whispers, always seeming to originate deep within a closely studied self: "You walk... with your life inside you." The poems travel the globe, set in New England, California, Mexico, Greece and beyond, though wherever her poems go, Gregg never forgets that "if paradise is to be here/ it will have to include her." Gregg offers up poems of love lost and won, and of an average life lived with extraordinary force, as high art, honing in on little tragedies that lead inexorably to the big one, Death, which more often than not arrives personified: "When death comes, we take off our clothes." The poems always rejoice, however dark their subjects, in a powerful sense of simply being alive, and at times beauty and happiness break through in moments of stillness and solitude: "It is summer and I am in the middle/ of my life. Alone and happy." (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Several poems in this latest book from PEN/Voelcker award winner Gregg (In the Middle Distance) allude to the tragic love story of Orpheus and Eurydice, suggesting the overall tone. Including new works as well as selections from previous volumes, these free-verse poems generally progress from growing up to growing old, with the early poetry reminiscing about a six-year-old and her feeling of being connected to all things and the later poems musing on unbelief, death, and hell. As Gregg ages, she feels the loss of friends, father, and lovers and the betrayal of her husband and tries with mixed success to put this state into words. Some of the poems are marred by Gregg's tendency to indulge in abstractions and profundities: "Presence gives," Gregg writes. "Absence allows and calls, until presence holds the invisible weeping" ("The Apparent"). More attention to the specific nouns inspiring the concept would have helped. When the poems are good, they use vivid metaphors grounded in nature, from the sinuous motion of a copperhead snake to the ragged migration of salmon. Calling on W.C. Williams's haikulike lines as well as Amy Lowell's imagism, Gregg is at her best employing understatement and concrete details. Suitable for larger public libraries.--Diane Scharper, Towson Univ., MD (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
