This book is a must have for any teenager who is taking a look at the world and how it is unfair to everyone in all these different ways. It has poems about everything from the Holocaust to Love and everything in between. I would recommend you get his book, as it is a great source of views from people who are everyone else's outsiders.

This book is not only a picture window into the lives of our neighborhood genius/weirdos but a well orchestrated look at the quirks and unsettling habits of our next-door neighbors, teachers, and even family.

Bosselaar has brought together a mix of poems that are accssesible to the average reader and challenging enough for the hardened MFA student. I will give this as a present to my literati friends AND my Oprah Book Club friends and though their *readings* may differ I have no doubt their enjoyment will not be diminished in the least.

Laure-Anne Bosselaar, made quite a dent with her first book, THE HOUR BETWEEN DOG AND WOLF, which went into second and third printings. She has followed it up with a second collection of poems every bit as robust and appealing as her first. Bosselaar, a Belgian import writing in American English, is living proof that poetic rigor and heartfelt passion can get along just fine together. Some would argue that the two, in fact, NEED to be together. The fact that she opens her head and heart so compellingly, in a non-native language, is all the more impressive.

What a joy to discover a new poet! This book delights on all levels. Her poetry is intelligent, sensual, practical and mystical. These treasures will bring many "aha" moments and this is one to keep in the car to refresh you throughout the day. She lives the same life we all live, but hers is deeply infused with poetics. Read this book and your days will be, too.

The title of the anthology is what initially captured my attention. Although the theme may not be typical of an anthology, the poetry is wonderful. Yet, what I loved the most about this collection is the way each poem reflects a moment whether self-reflective, angry, or lonely clearly and succinctly without any exaggerations. I definitely suggest this book to those who like poetry that is beautiful through its honesty and simplicity.

laure-anne bosselaar is one of the most gifted and moving poets of the past twenty years. seeing her read at Stockton College in December of 1999, I was moved to tears during more than one of her poems. "My Little Sisters of Love and Misery," for example, evokes a beauty and pain that is both striking and poignant for it's attention to detail and lack of self-pity. She speaks for the women who cannot speak for themselves, to the people in her life that she must forgive to survive, and to the world, she gives her unique view of love and laughter. her brilliance lies in the important fact that she never feels the need to sacrifice her sense of humor to get at the tragedy of life, because she realizes they are often one and the same.

when i met ms. bosselaar, she pinched my cheek and called me "dear poetry sister." it spoke volumes about the kind of person and writer that she is. here's hoping she continues to bless us with her unique gift.

These compelling narratives span post WWII Europe to contemporary USA -- the speaker, raised in a convent in Europe traces her life in the cruel environment of the convent to her married life here in this country. The poems are of daily life -- its joys and horrors. They are generous poems, long and meandering. They are accessible, always. Funny, sweet, scary and sumptuous.

Bosselaar's collection is electric. These narratives, often harrowing, speak the stories of many characters. The geographic and emotional terrain of this book is panoramic. This is a book of narratives that speed down the page and take the reader on one hell of a ride.

Have you ever had the urge, while waiting for a traffic signal, to get out of your car for a better look at a flock of starlings veering and banking in tandem against an early evening pink November sky? If so, you might enjoy this collection of poems. Nature exists even in our cities, and this anthology is for the most part a celebration of that fact. Although many of the poems lament our failure to better accommodate nature in our urban environments, a larger number seem inspired by the natural beauty that can still be found there if we only pause to notice. There are over 150 selections all together, some from new poets, others from known poets, all reflecting upon some aspect of urban nature, from geraniums in the office (they smell like shovels) to a salamander in the video store parking lot.

My approach to this anthology was to slowly peruse the pages, searching not for a whole poem that I immediately love - those are always rare - but for an evocative phrase, an image, sound or metaphor that stirred me enough to beg my return. With apologies for not mentioning any names, let me splice together a few examples to capture the flavor. Here's an earthmover parked across a vacant field from a sycamore whose bark curls like site maps and blueprints unrolled in a distant room, a million frogs shrieking like background music for the big bang, falling magnolia petals, the smell of road kill or fresh baked bread and beer brewing as the morning swells with promise.

The second time through I recognized some places where I'd been before but realized that I had overlooked some good ones such as the horse with the colossal nostrils, squirrels embracing their way up a tree, a national convention of republican cockroaches in the kitchen at night, azaleas confused by the bright lights installed after a burglary. There are poems about seasons: a snow plow shoves aside the early morning quiet, people laughing and shoveling together, butts of mother nature's joke; spring grass is what the earth sang; summer nights sleeping on the porch, crickets; fallen leaves flat-plastered on a wet sidewalk, bring in the houseplants - nature is most seductive when about to die.

There is a pleasing sparsity of poems about dogs and cats but birds are frequently featured, bad birds, uninvited, that swarm in and unpack right on private property, and good birds - a brave sparrow whose heart is smaller than a heart should be, a cardinal, its throat abounding with information, swans eating out of hands, an egret fishing in the feculent marsh, a thrush, its song a small aggression taken for joy. A whirlwind of chittering chimney swifts funnels down to roost, a pileated woodpecker ratchets around tree trunks, the scream of a redtail hawk strips varnish from the heart.

As might be expected pigeons are popular, waddling cheek by jowl among the bag ladies, their low voltage moans, their necks scarved with liquid green rainbows, beaks evolved for gutter cracks and handouts, investigating the wonders of gum. This book is not just about literary cities like NY, SF and LA but also about Chicago, Detroit, Phoenix, St Louis, Duluth and others - how they are and how they used to be. Its about animals and dreams, childhood memories of growing-up places in a time when urban nature was less of an oxymoron, before so much of it had been squeezed out. Its about pollution (even the snowflakes stink), empty lots and potholes (earth breathing through the streets), about escaping to the park, the zoo, the botanical garden, the college campus or the outskirts of town, or merely looking out the window like that couple that made love in the afternoon thirty stories up, then watched a peregrine swoop past their room as if delivering a message from the gods.

After several readings I had connected on a personal level with many of the poems, discovered some poets that I want to read more of, and learned that in some ways, nature is even more poignant when projected against a cityscape.

Note: this review also appeared in the Autubon Naturalist News, Feb 2001