I spent days, after reading this book, weeks, imbibing and re-imbibing every syllable. I felt the kind of drunk, dizzy, first-time-in-love kind of love for this language that I hadn't felt for poetry in a decade. I've gone back and read it again maybe two, three, or ninety times since, and it hasn't lost its vertigos of wonder. It has inspired a host of imitators (Brenda Shaughnessy, Karen Volkman, Mary Jo Bang), none of whom are as brave or wild or awe-inducing. That an author so unprolific should inspire a whole new branch of writing bespeaks the importance of this book; poets who read it often feel that they've found something that had been missing from all poetries leading up to it, and afterwards everything they read seems predictable, emotionless, and linguistically flat. The last time a book came along that was this daring and this powerful, it was posthumous: Sylvia Plath's _Ariel_, whose swoops and deft gestures of language don't actually come close to those of _The Master Letters_.

This is one of the best and most fascinating books of poems published in the last quarter of the 20th century. An extraordinary accomplishment.

This reworking of themes from Dickinson and other sources is sexy, intellectual, sentimental, unsentimental, funny, heartbreaking, and groovy. Lucie Brock Broido is one of the most talented and under-appreciated poets writing today. An example of brilliance: "was keeper of the badly marred, was furious done god."

I will be quick. She has, here, made language hers. It is too little to say that this book is "good." To see where her mind travels and the lyrical language she uses to express that place have left me breathless as I read and reread her work. Truly, unless you have already imagined the day the whale landed on the streets of Manhattan, you have not imagined enough.

When a book of poems this magnificent goes out of print, the world is in dire trouble. Let us hope that the loss is only temporary, and that meanwhile you can borrow a copy from your community library. If not, satisfy your cravings with The Master Letters, another superb (and necessary) addition to the art from this Master Craftswoman--without a doubt, one of the finest poets working today. Alyssa A. Lappen

Lucie Brock-Broido, as is the lot for wonderous poets, will not be given her due attention when she deserves it. I know this because she hasn't recieved enough yet and she's long past due.