“To say it flat out: From her hiding place in Fogelsville, Pennsylvania, Barbara Crooker has been writing—one by one—some of the finest poems in America. More contains many of these poems. It is a book of longing and praise (‘Anchor me to this world, God of spindrift, / God of spume and salt spray, God of sand’), of whimsy and humor (‘What you want comes in five flavors, / and all of them are chocolate: / milk, mocha, alpine white, semi-, bittersweet’), of happiness (‘Every dog within fifty miles is off-leash, running for the sheer dopey joy of it’). Above all, these are poems of response, as in Crooker’s lovely responses to paintings by such as Monet and Hopper and, in the surpassing, ‘The Mother Suite,’ her terribly moving responses to a mother’s decline.
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