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Rating: 
Summary: Pleasantly Surprised
Review: I read this book because I was curious. Sandra McPherson, Alfred Corn, and Marvin Bell (the three judges who chose this book as the Lamont Poetry selection) are all accomplished poets, and I wondered how they had come to choose a book published by a small, feminist press like Firebrand books. I wasn't sure what to expect, but I ended up pleasantly surprised. Pratt doesn't use rhyme, meter, or classical forms, of course, but this book still conveys a careful craft. Her words are often well chosen, and the arrangements feel original enough. A few of the poems might be too simplistic, but others are anything but. Also, it might not mean much to literature, but for a general reader like myself, the book was a darn good read. A story builds from the first poem to the last, and the story moved me. It was well put and well taken. The strong story made it closer to a page-turner that I thought poetry could be. A squeamish reader might be turned off by the subject matter, I suppose, but I was taken by Pratt's honesty. I didn't catch a whiff of either pretense or empty politics in this book. I wouldn't put Pratt on the same level as the modern masters (Derek Walcott, for instance, or Elizabeth Bishop) and I still question if this was the BEST of all the second books of poetry published in 1989--but the book was pleasureable in more than enough ways to make it worth reading. I give it 3 1/2 stars.
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