Wolf Lake, White Gown Blown Open: Poems (Juniper Prize for Poetry)

I am still reading this book, and will, I can tell, many times over. I read a LOT of poetry, and this may be the best collection I've seen in the last few years.These poems are so well, written, so full of sensuous abandon and rueful self-knowledge, they are a consolation and an incitementto live your life as it is, with no holds barred. If you are a reader and you want to position it, these poems eist in the same quadrant of thepoetry universe as Kim Addonozio (only more whole-minded, less fatalistic and S&M)are as well-written as the best poems of Lynn Emanuel (only less cerebral and reflexive)as beautifully ornamented as the poems of Laura Kasischk, and as sassy as Adrian Blevins, another southern womanpoetry survivor. Other names that come to mind are Dorrianne Laux or Lisa Lewisor Anne Marie Macari. It's unfortunate that I am only using women writers to place this collection,but I am a male reader, and these poems are really remarkable and for every one who enjoysthe jazz fusion of human life, tragedy and comedy for the sake of theself. Read it.

Diane, your poetry packs a punch. I see now why you have gotten recognition and what leads the reviewers in poetry journals to be slightly intoxicated in their praise. I have tried to read your poems in small doses, to avoid reeling from their blows of terrible beauty, the pleasurable pain of your gorgeous, brutal images---but your words lure me on and before I know it, I've read half a dozen poems two or three times each. And then I'm staggering. Never been a drinker, but I've read Charles Bukowski; never been stabbed in the heart, but I've read Diane Seuss.

I got to see Diane read from her brand new poems and it was a most delightful experience ever. This book is so delicious and so is Diane!

By page 53, I was in tears and ordering all the rest of her books.This is how we think and live and love and lose it all. I am astounded by Seuss's ability to distill all of those feelings and experiences into words that sing and hum like a mother rocking you while you sob.

There are a lot of praiseworthy things I want to say about Wolf Lake, White Gown Blown Open. It's complex, soulful, wrenching and has all the jazz of a swan in heat with none of the viciousness. But above all, just as the title says, it is open. Diane Seuss's poetry contains so much gravity and heat because of her ability to witness the world around her - Niles, Wolf Lake, artwork, music and nature - as well as go deep within herself with brutal honesty. Sometimes with humility, sometimes with bravado and often through grief, a sense of love exists. I believe that love comes from her openness to powerful imagery (such as "the river that purrs and burns" and "a tangled sullied wilderness scarified with highways"), language and all that life has to offer. Like the German chemist in "In search of the molecular structure of benzene," Seuss's poems will "[awaken] us to understanding" within ourselves. At least, that's how I experience her book each time I read it. If not, a swan in heat still is entertaining.