As one of the poets featured in Will Work for Peace, one might expect me to be a bit biased, but nothing could be farther from the truth. Most poets work in a virtual vacuum, only tenuously connected to each other by the occasional workshop or shared membership in a 'poetry society'. When Brett Axel first approached me for a submission to an anthology he was considering, the names Marge Piercy, Lyn Lifshin, Moshe Bennaroch and so many others were abstractions to me as a fledgling poet. I knew these tremendous writers were 'out there' somewhere, beating down doors with their words and keeping a struggling artform alive. But to think that someday I would ever share a credit with these dynamic modern poets would be a pipe dream at best. It is through the sincere efforts of Brett Axel that many newer voices like mine have an extraordinary opportunity to appear with Pulitzer Prize winners and other poetic heavyweights. By way of an honest review, however, I will say this- not everything in this book will be to your particular liking. I myself came across some works that did not move me in the way the author may have intended. Some imagery can be raw and visceral, using shock value in place of craft at times. But to ignore those voices would be an even more shocking turn of events, so praise be to the editor for not sacrificing his vision to a senseless conformity. As Pete Seeger so aptly put it in his quote, trying to read all these poems at one time would be like trying 'to swallow Manhattan whole'. I say to you- buy this book, read this book, but understand that it's what you do after reading this book that will ultimately define who you could be. Poetry is alive and well, and lives in the blunt pages of Will Work for Peace.

Just amazing start to finish! I like the disregard for fame used in putting the book together. That great poems got in even if they were writtenby nobodys. Look at Roger Bonair-Agard's poem on page 74. Shortly after Will Work For Peace came out he won Slam Nationals, becoming Slam Champion of 1999, which will be getting him lots of offers. But Zeropanik Press didn't need to be told he was good by an award. They could tell by his writing! Good for them and good for all of us because Will Work For Peace is a literary milestone. It's a new standard for all future anthology editors to try to live up to. Thumbs up to Brett Axel and Thumbs up to Zeropanik Press for their guts and integrty.

Brett Axel visited my Church and I bought a copy of Will Work For Peace from him, not for poetry, but because I care about working for peace. I started reading through it thinking It'd just go on my shelf and that'd be the end of it, but the book grabbed me and kept me rivited. If I had known that poetry was this alive I'd have been into poetry. I've been reading some of the poems to my friends who also didn't think poetry was important and they are saying the same thing. Fantastic! There's no way to get through this book without having your old mindsets challenged. It's funny, powerful, sad, and uplifting. A book that deserves to be read by everyone. A book that really can make the world a better place!

The story of Gigi is a wonderful piece of work. It discards the old fashioned minds of the era and brings to light the truth. Colette brings her own life experience into this short story. Bringing into the story the way how to catch a man and how many is so important in some people lives and love dies away (but not exactly dies just hidden).

Gigi was really about a time, a place and a way of life that is no more--the Belle Epoque and the demimonde of Paris.

The "demimonde" or twilight or half-world, was the domain of paid courtesans, not prostitutes, but professional "artistes" who made their living as the paid companions of rich men. They often were dancers or actresses and didn't marry--"We never marry in our family" states Gigi's mother. The Belle Epoque ended with World War One and saw the revitalizaton of Paris by Hausmann and others, creating the city's magnificent architecture that we still love today.

Gigi is a young girl of 16. She falls in love with a rich gentlemen of 33, Gaston. But contrary to custom, she wants something quite different that her family has planned for her. This reflects the idealized dream that Colette had of love with a much older man. She herself pursued this dream disastrously by marrying the highly unsuitable Willy, and also assigned her alter-ego Claudine the same but happier dream in her Claudine novels.

Read this for the wonderful evocation of Paris in the gay 90's, and realize that it has little to do with the musical--this is about a way of life that has passed, along with horse drawn carriages, laced hourglass corsets, and women's hats the size of cartwheels.

I love the way Colette writes, her descriptions and words just take me back to that period of time, turn of the century Paris. She gives flavor to the book making us feel what the Parisian culture was like at that time. I totaly love Gigi. I've watched the movie first which is why I bought the book in the first place. I like the book because it describes more of the affair and courtesan stuff which the movie sugars up to give it a G rating. I just wish that Colette could've had Gigi go be Gaston's arm ornament at some party like Gigi did in the movie.

I read the positive reviews and had hoped to check this out from the library to give it a preview. Unfortunately, they didn't have a copy, but I was so certain that I would enjoy this book and be able to apply it to my designs that I ordered it anyway. While it is very through and well-documented, it is really meant for those with an old-fashioned "crafty" bent to their sewing. I'm talking frills and puffs and applique and quilting and Celtic knots, and lots of it. Plenty of grid-like patterns to be had for the quilting fanatics. If you interpret "manipulate" to mean painting on, slicing, tearing, knotting, or otherwise changing the look of the fabric itself (as opposed to making it puff out or pleated), then this is not the book you are looking for. Another disappointment were the black and white photos. Even though it was just plain muslin being photographed, I felt gypped having paid so much for what resembles a bunch of 1960s textbook photos.

As one reviewer notes, this book focuses on "old fashioned" methods like shirring, trapunto, pleating, etc. but the originality and creativity of the examples are an inspiring display of how traditional methods can be used to create a really dramatic, unique look.

Wolff demonstrates many ways to manipulate the large scale texture of the fabric, and the result is NOT something for the timid dressmaker. In fact, many of the examples seem to be from quilts and home-decoration.
(It must have taken her a couple years just to make the hundreds of beautiful muslin samples, which are clearly photographed in black and white! ) I also think these techniques would be great for handbags, high-drama evening wear, and clothing for people who love texture (like me).

Many of her amazing techniques are labor intensive, often hand-sewn, but worth it, I think!

Amazing! Colette Wolff has presented innumerable techniques in which simple fabric may be gathered, shirred, ruffled, flounced, given godets, pleats, smocked, tucked, corded, quilted, and stuffed, and how one may use these provocative and remarkable methods of sculpting fabric using combinations of the above.

In using simple white cotton muslin, Colette presents to the student a visualization of precisely what one may expect of the diverse manipulations of fabric. A seamstress may take a plain piece of fabric and transform it into a work of art. This book is for the student who desires to go beyond simple seams. Each section is explained comprehensively and given a distinct black and white photo so that one may ascertain the accuracy of one's project.

A must-have for the serious seamstress interested in artistic needlework. Happy sewing!

France seems to produce more than its share of wonderful stylists who don't have much to say (Georges Simenon also comes to mind). This is a lovely, cozy read, but I'd sure like to know what the other reviewer found that is especially about women or directed toward women. I find what Janet Flanner said about Colette much more to the point, something to the effect that there was hardly a tree in French literature until Colette came along. What she does--and does supremely well--is describe flowers, insects, trees, whole gardens beautifully and precisely. For this reader that's quite enough.

I first read this book back when the earth was cooling. When I wanted to reread it, I couldn't find it, so I bought another copy. I've loaned it out, never had it returned, bought it again, ditto, ditto, ditto.
I've probably bought this book 10 times over the past 20 years, and that's no doubt a record for me.
People associate Colette with Cheri and her other erotic and somewhat scandalous writing and life-style.
Sido (her mother) and My Mother's House are written in an altogether different tone: lyrical, idyllic, dreamy, funny (of course; she's a very funny writer), nostalgic.
Read these two companion books, usually sold in a single volume, to get a real taste of what it was like to spend your childhood in rural France before the turn of the last century, in an eccentric household run by an unusually permissive mother and a much older, loving but distant father.
To read these books is to be sucked into another era by a writer uniquely skilled at her craft - and most of all, it gives you a fresh appreciation for the child who became Colette.

There are many Colettes, and I cherish them all. But the one dearest to me is the Colette who wrote so lovingly and voluptuously of her early years. In "My Mother's House" and "Sido" Colette writes about her family, her childhood in the country, and the creatures - human and otherwise - which informed those years.

In her writing about these years, Colette describes the inner life of children, country life, and her parents and their odd, affectionate and often difficult relationship with each other and with their children. We have the sense of lives tied to the earth and the turn of seasons, particularly through loving descriptions of her mother, Sido.

These two memoirs are not about "not much" as one reviewer puts it, they're about the sensuality of life, about enduring bonds of love and of blood, and about the education of a writer. Perfectly gorgeous work, and highly recommended.

This book is written in French, which will be a bit daunting for non-French speaking people. On the otherhand, the book offers many excellent photographs of vintage dolls and clothing for Bleuette. The book does not cover the large number of catalogs published for Bleuette's wardrobe from 1916-1960. I found the lack of an index and lack of organization of the material to be an impediment to quickly accessing the book's factual material.

The book is in french and out of print, but there is an english version approved by the original author and available for sale in America. I have it and its great! Good luck finding it! It wasn't easy. Try the doll shows, Barbara Hilliker or Doris Lechter, American authors on the Bleuette doll.

I would just like to say that i recently got the oppurtunity to meet Mrs. Inez at a high school poetry competetion and she is every bit as graceful and enlightening as her poetry---

Colette Inez is one of the few poets who can transform her personal history so that it becomes as powerful as the stories we hand down from generation to generation. Sad and inspiring, Inez's central theme is her struggle to comprehend and imagine her parents, a scholar and a priest, who abandoned her to a Catholic orphanage in Brussels and eventually foster homes in the United States. As a survivor of abandonment and alcoholic abuse, Inez is especially sensitive to finding those small moments that keep us alive, that give us hope, that allow us to look at the worst of life and move beyond it. She writes of the passion of her parents; the austere life of orphans; the love she has for her own husband; the great artists who inspire her; and the nature of animals, angels, and trees. Those who admire poetry will find Inez a graceful writer who knows how to find just the right words and images to convey difficult personal history so that it never becomes sentimental, so that it gains its own mythic power. Those who have suffered abuse, no matter the source, will see Inez as a survivor of great courage.

The Pure and the Impure by Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette with introduction by Judith Thurman (Literature/Gay Studies). Recommended.

Colette believed The Pure and the Impure was her best work. I can't judge, not having read anything of hers but a few short stories, but this collection of her observations about human attitudes toward relationships and sexuality is insightful and timeless. It is also difficult and obscure at times, perhaps because of the translation and because there is no real structure to such a collection.

Thanks to her milieu, her position in it, and her willingness to seek the story, Colette could draw upon the most interesting people of her time-the givers and the takers. From the older woman who publicly fakes an orgasm while self-pleasuring in an opium house to gladden the heart of her young, sickly lover to the roué who exclaims of women, "They allow us to be their master in the sex act, but never their equal. That is what I cannot forgive them" to the circle of prominent women who learn the ways of sex from servants, dress as men, and love horses (she calls the most notable of these women "La Chevalière) to the "happy," alcoholic, lesbian poet Renée Vivien to the gay men with whom she seems most comfortable, Colette covers a spectrum of sexuality and combinations-including those men and women who play their heterosexual and homosexual relations against one another.

"I'm devoted to that boy, with all my heart," the older woman tells Colette, a stranger to her. "But what is the heart, madame? It's worth less than people think. It's quite accommodating. It accepts anything. You give it whatever you have, it's not very particular. But the body . . . Ha! That's something else, again." Thurman believes this sums up Colette's view precisely, the heart as a slave to the body.

Although Colette apparently wanted to remain an impartial observer, she cannot mask her own feelings and biases. One senses that she could not quite see a woman-woman partnership as "whole," as passionate, as capable of being the source of tragedy in the same way as other types of relationships. (Anaïs Nin will also hint at something similar in her diaries, at the "incompleteness" of female/female love.) "What woman would not blush to seek out her amie only for sensual pleasure? In no way is it passion that fosters the devotion of two women, but rather a feeling of kinship." She is fascinated by the story of Lady Eleanor Butler and Miss Sarah Ponsonby, the "Ladies of Llangollen," who elope and spend several decades living together. During this time, Butler will keep an extensive journal about her life with "My Beloved," while, to Colette's consternation and fascination, Ponsonby remains a silent partner. Colette so romanticizes the Ladies that she says they run off together as "young girls," when in fact Butler was 39 and Ponsonby in her 20s. While there is all kind of detail about their living arrangements, from gardening, sewing, hosting an array of distinguished visitors, and sharing a bedroom and bed, there is nothing known of their emotional or sexual intimacies other than their obvious devotion to one another. They remain a happy, content enigma to Colette and to the present day.

The book concludes on a more personal note-about jealousy, "the only suffering that we endure without ever becoming used to it." She maintains that "a man never belongs to us" and hints at the unique and not unfriendly relationship two female rivals may have-even rivals who wish to kill one another. When one rival tells Colette all the things that had prevented her from killing Colette in Rambouillet (missed train, stalled car, etc.), Colette says, "I was not in Rambouillet." The relationship between her and her rival becomes more interesting, more revealing, more important, and more affectionate than with the man over whom they duel.

Colette suffered what many turn-of-the-century female intellectuals must have-a society's fear of "masculine" women who are too intelligent, too outspoken, too knowing. When she offers to travel with the roué (apparently as a friend), he says in seriousness, "I only like to travel with women," which, a moment later, is softened by, "You, a woman? Why, try as you will . . ." Even today, there are women who have experienced this.

"This is a sad book," Colette said. "It doesn't warm itself at the fire of love, because the flesh doesn't cheer up its ardent servants." Thurman adds, "This great ode to emptiness was written by a woman who felt full."

The Pure and the Impure is a must read for anyone who enjoys Colette's other writings; it is the most autobiographical of her works. Recommended.

Diane L. Schirf, 1 January 2002.

Colette, perhaps best known to Americans as the author of "Gigi" (1945) was a prolific French novelist, critic, playwright, and performer. She also wrote the four "Claudine" novels (1900-1903), and became celebrated for "Cheri" (1920; followed by "The Last of Cheri" in 1926).

She regarded "The Pure and the Impure" as her best work; a mostly autobiographical treatise on Eros and love, particularly Sapphic love. She mixes a reporter's objectivity with deeply felt analysis psychological and philosophical observations. Sometimes she takes a dispassionate, almost distant look at passion; other times her emotional attachments to her subjects--primarily lesbian aristocrats and artistes--are candidly exposed.

She is an exquisite writer without being precious. Colette bends words and phrases perfectly, and one is struck by her vivid yet subtle prose, as evocative as Woolf but perhaps even more sensual. "The Pure and the Impure" contains memorable passages of keen observation and wit, and one feels drawn to her observations:

"...I delighted in the...empty gaiety of the chatter and the diverting and challenging exchange of glances, the cryptic reference to certain treasons, comprehended at once, and the sudden outbursts of ferocity. I reveled...in their half-spoken language, the exchange of threats, of promises, as if, once the slow-thinking male had been banished, every message from woman to woman became clear and overwhelming, restricted to a small but infallible number of signs..."

This is not to deny, however, that reading the book is sometimes difficult. Whether due to the translation, the era, or Colette's particular style, her writing can be challenging, particularly her last chapter, a very subjective, personal description of jealousy.

This is a beautifully written book about the erotic, about men and women, and about the natural history of love. I urge you to introduce yourself to her writings. Highly recommended.

I found this book a joy to read I couldn't put it down.The life that this author had as a child the smells of the cooking the lush gardens of her grandparents yards and the Maket place must have been a fun place to go as a young child, it was truly like being there.Her ability to keep a good head as a kid being moved around and as always the kitchen was a big part of her life a place were she felt secure. I have tryed some of the recipes they are easy to follow and taste great.

If you are like me, you enjoy reading cookbooks that are more than just compilations of recipes but also include evocative text that recreates another time and place. "Memories of a Lost Egypt" is such a book. The author's vivid and touching reminiscences of her childhood often center on food and her relationships with her family's cooks, and she skillfully interweaves her narrative with recipes for the delicious dishes she savored and learned to prepare.

Another Middle Eastern cookbook that I treasure is Sonia Uvezian's "Recipes and Remembrances from an Eastern Mediterranean Kitchen: A Culinary Journey through Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan." It too evokes a strong sense of time and place, and it is filled with outstanding recipes.

I think that Rossant has a great gift for evocating her past. I felt that she really gave us an idea of what Egypt was like in the 40's. The recipes are excellent, I have already cooked from it.

I am a novice baker, and I found the recepies in the beginner's part of the book simple! The chocolate cake was delicious and after a little practice my cakes were looking like art. Collette is beyond talented, and it is worth the price just to look at some of her creations.

I love this book! It contains beautiful photographs of Colette's amazing cakes, and easy to understand instructions for creating them. It helps if you already know something about cake decorating, but her explanations are clear even if you are a novice. Throw away any preconceived notions you may have about what cakes are "supposed" to look like -- these are like nothing you have ever seen before. Certainly, these are not everyday creations, but for a very special occasion they would be worth the effort

This is the second book i have by Colette Peters,i like this one better.I like this one better because there are more cakes in buttercream & for beginners.Every one of her books are works of art & very inspiring.You will want to be able to make each & every cake in all of her books.I cant say enough about her talent & anyone else talent who can do these creations.For me personally,i found this book to be more useful.I dont like to work with fondant & i dont know anyone that thinks it taste well.So that reason & the fact that this book has more buttercream cakes,cakes for the beginner to the more advanced, makes this a better one for me.

I can't agree that Colette is under-rated. (Not in her native France, certainly. After all, she was the first woman ever given a state funeral.) But this peculiarly intense novella does deserve as much recognition as the more widely heralded "Cheri" and "Claudine" books.

What stands in its way is a sophistication and subtlety so profoundly French that, even translated into English, the narrative sometimes seems to be in a foreign language. The nearest American literature equivalent I can think of is Henry James's "The Sacred Fount", which is also a love story explored on such a psychologically deep level that it can be hard to know what exactly is going on.

But even at her murkiest, Colette never fails to provide a spectacular mimesis of the natural world. The reader may all but recline in the flower-filled meadows, the warmth of the sun on his face cooled by fragrant breezes. Her insightful portrayal of what another writer called "the wrung loins of boyhood" can be considered a rich bonus.

Set in summer in Brittanny, Vinca and Phillipe are childhood friends who are awakening to sexuality.Phillipe has an affair with an older woman, a theme taken from Colette's own life. The affair has a lasting effect on the teenage lovers. This book is provocative, as only Colette could be on the subject of sex.

This is a great book, with vivid characters and plenty of moral complexity. It is about the affair of a very
young man with an older woman, who uses him yet at the same time reflects the emptiness of her life and her
enjoyment of control. You also get a wider view of the consequences of their affair on the delicate balance of his other
relationships, particularly with his childhood lover. And the "relations" are handled with extreme dexterity and delicacy,
never going for cheap thrills. It is packed with descriptions of sensations and thought, beautifully poetic and dense,
requiring re-reading and reflection from the reader.

Taken together, it emerges as a subtle and unusually stimulating reading experience. Collette truly was underrated.

Warmly recommended.