Author Description

From Library Journal Shoaf seems to have enjoyed selecting every noun and verb in these 40 quiet, "well-polished" poems. After a walk in a hurricane ("I saw thin sheets of water/ spin like ghosts from the Charles"), she feels "honed, quite essential." With this patient, refining vision, she searches for a focus of "pure sensation" in becoming pregnant ("Soon I'll cradle a belly,/ and dream names in the dark"), seeing her mother become old ("I watched her shrink, and it scared me"), and "small measures" of what it means to be American. Combining a purifying sensibility with compassion for loss, Shoaf extracts "the grace of the gesture" from the "usual cravings" of "messy careers." To see things "honed, quite essential," as Shoaf desires to, is to understand them. For most poetry collections.- Frank Allen, West Virginia State Coll., InstituteCopyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. Product Description A collection of poems that create a sharp picture of contemporary life, focusing on memories, everyday life, and nature