The Weight of the Ripened

Poetry. These poems are poised and self-contained, humming with an internal logic and an external music that soothes and disturbs by turns. They are dense and lush, yet offer the reader uncluttered clarity. Rich with a physicality through which the spirit is revealed, these poems feint from fruits and flowers to family history, including the poet's own in utero, never far from the music of New Orleans street names or the interior puzzles of language. Shades and scents abound, a sustainable stain of memory, in these wary psalms to the healing properties of the physical world, as well as the uses and misuses of love. --Ralph Adamo