I love poetry, generally prefer poetry rich in metaphor and allusions, this set is more direct (though containing a number of nice mythological references)... But this slim volume is one of the most touching, sad and beautiful books I've ever read... I'll reread this a hundred times... and hope I find a love as deep.

In "Sorrow," Claribel Alegria has created poetry of great beauty and power. This is a bilingual edition, with each of Alegria's Spanish poems accompanied by Carolyn Forche's English translations. Forche has also written an introduction in which she explains how much of this book reflects Alegria's emotions over the death of her husband, Bud Flakoll.

Alegria's poems are emotionally raw, and graced with lyrical beauty and stunning imagery. Many of the poems in this collection revisit figures from Greek mythology: Ariadne, Circe, Sisyphus, and more. Particularly powerful is "The Reflections of Icarus," which re-imagines this character as a metaphor for poets. A number of other poems are short, haiku-like creations that examine both nature and the human world.

In the poem "This Is a Night of Shadows," Alegria writes, "My heart wishes / to burst with rage / but it sprouts wings." This memorable image is characteristic of her work. Alegria moves from tragedy to transcendence, and her work is rich in insight. This is an important volume by one of the great writers of Central America.

All the poems in this collection grew out of the the poet's grief when she lost her husband. Her voice comes from a space deep within and is immediate. The grief and pain in all the poems is devastating and all-encompassing, but transformative. Her sadness and sense of loss colors every aspect of her life, but then shifts and dissipates, lifting her to another place in space and time. It was so refreshing to read a poet who so beautifully acknowledges and expresses deep emotion.

Please take the time to read a few of the sample poems. This book is a profound and moving account of suffering, loss, longing and hope that really hit home. THe poems will speak for themselves.

Hermann Hesse's "Poems" is also along this same line of thought and it is available in translation with the German on the facing page.

This book has done so much to call us not to forget our own humanity. The impersonal power of war, the dehumanization of violent death at the hands of other humans- such tragedies as these call us to remember who we are as humans. It is one of the peculiarities of life that it is often at the brink of destruction that we see most clearly what our hearts have always spoken to us. In the violence of war and conflict, our thoughts often return to the simple things of life; the laughter of a child who lived next door, the smell of spring, the faces of old schoolmates.

This collection of poetry serves its title well. Only one poem spoken aptly to our heart calls us to our true selves, against forgetting.

You may also find the poems of Hermann Hesse of importance in this regard, along with the Penguin Book of First World War Poetry.

to the common lot, / survivor of that time, that place." Anna Akhmatova, one of the poets included in this anthology, wrote those words in the years before WWII as she struggled to survive, and express, life under Stalin.

Carolyn Forche has assembled this collection of poems, each of which expresses, in their own time and place, witness. This is not an idle witness, a standing by, a cool, detached observance. Forche writes in her introduction, "Modernity ...is marked by a superstitious worship of oppressive force and by a concomitant reliance on oblivion." The witness of these poets neither worships force nor accepts oblivion.

The effect of reading these poems, written in the face of war, genocide, oppression, despair and racism, even reading one or two at a time as I have been doing, raises the possibility that war, genocide, oppression, despair and racism are abject failures. Whatever their effects, they accomplish nothing. Resistance counts for everything. Pasternak, an included poet, described his novel in words which describe this volume: "besides the importance of described human lots and historical events there is an effort ... to portray the whole sequence of facts and beings and happenings like some moving entireness, like a developing, passing by, rolling and rushing inspiration, as if reality itself had freedom and choice and was composing itself out of numberless varients and versions."

Men and women from every continent give lie in their poems to the sad accusation that 'human dignity' and 'human rights' are 'western' or 'american' ideas imposed on the rest of the world. The oppressors are as likely to be 'western' and 'american' as anyone else. The witnesses "Against Forgetting" are everyone.

Because of witness, because of resistance, hope exists. As another poet (Muriel Rukeyser) suggests: The whole thing - waterfront, war, city, / sons, daughters, me - / Must be re-imagined, / Sun on the orange-red roof.

Great book. Absolutely great.

Georg Trakl is the greatest German poet most english readers have never heard of. Most of his best poetry dates from the period just before and during his service in the Austrian Army during the First World War and this makes him a brief contemporary of Rilke. However, while Rilke's verses are each a world of incandescent beauty and spiritual profundity, Trakl's are intimations of death, decay and expressions of a world trapped in a cycle of hell. His poems are intensely expressionistic, dark and powerful. Simko's translation is excellent; though he makes a few word choices from the German that might be open to debate, he does an excellent job of preserving the poems' structure while transmitting their power in English. My only quibble is that I would have liked it if the selection of poems was broader.

This is a very fine book of translations. To read Georg Trakl in German, of course, is far better. His German is extroadinarily beautiful. Trakl was a magnificent poet; I would say one of my absolutely favorite poets. His techniques are marvelous. He comes from, and surpasses, the lineage of such master technicians as Edgar Allen Poe, and Charles Baudelaire. He wrote poetry as if he were composing music, modulating colors and emotional content rather than tones and harmonies. One has the sense that he was divinely inspired. His work is miraculous.

In 1914, my great uncle died in a Cracow sanitorium--the causeof death was overdose on narcotics, most probably a suicide. Throughmy earlier years, I was read my uncle's poetry at bedtime and warned of the danger that awaits the poet in this cruel heartless world. As a teenager, I experimented with poetry yearning to transcend the souless quest for social mastery that is adolescence. Finally, upon the eve that I was to lose my arm in an effort to attain a Villonesque apprehension of the reality of the gallows, I was approached by the ghost of my great Uncle, Georg Trakl, who recited to me his last poem, Grodek--whereupon my desire to versify became a crest of shame. . .for I was a player of games where he was a player of the sacred flute of pan. . .My silence is a song in reverence to the author of the poem Grodek

This book is almost uniformly excellent, but the essay by Nicholas Hentoff alone is worth the purchase price. Hentoff, a semi-legendary Arizona criminal defense lawyer and champion of civil rights, offers invaluable advice to nonfiction writers on avoiding legal landmines, and therefore avoiding the tendency towards self-censorship. Every journalist who cares about doing work that matters should have a copy of this essay.

In Writing Creative Nonfiction: Instruction And Insights From The Teachers Of The Associated Writing Programs, the editorial team of Carolyn Forche and Philip Gerard present essays by more than thirty contributors focusing on all aspects and elements of the creative writing craft as it applies to nonfiction. This outstanding compendium of presentations ranges from researching ideas and structuring a story to reportage and personal reflection. Along with insightful prompts and exercises, Writing Creative Nonfiction covers every type and category from biography and true-life adventure, to memoir and narrative history. Here is an invaluable reference whose reading will enrich and enable any aspiring writer to significantly advance their skills and expertise at writing nonfiction whatever the extent of their previous experience or training.

I purchased this book as an inspiration for designing the Advanced Feature Writing class and others I teach at Northwestern University. As I read and did some of the exercises suggested in the book, I began to realize how useful this book is not only for aspiring and senior writers of all kinds, but also for those who teach others to write.

It's a compendium of essays and writing exercises written by various authors from poet to essayist to magazine feature article writer, with some selections of their writings at the end of the book.

Don't let the long titles of mini-chapters steer you away from this book. For example, one chapter is entitled "Saying goodbye to once upon a time or implementing postmodernism in creative nonfiction." It may sound daunting, but the chapter is written clearly, creatively and thoughtfully about how fact, truth and fiction often get tangled when we write. The author of this chapter, Laura Wexler, shows us that the only place we can find cold, hard facts is in fairy tales. Yes, that's right. Fairy tales. Because in a fairy tale we can all say with certainty that Cinderella lost her glass slipper and Prince Charming found it and placed it on her foot, and they got married. But life isn't like that. And neither is nonfiction writing.

Wexler writes, regarding the Rodney King beating: "The Rodney King beating cannot be told as a fairy tale. There is no single true version of What Happened. Because everything about it is up for grabs, everything is unstable: motives, actions, and interpretations. It seems we cannot, despite Rodney King's famous plea, 'all get along' -- because we tell different stories about the same events. We always do." Wexler, however, does not leave us perlexed and discouraged about this "fact." Instead she offers insights and advice on how to write while remembering the nebulous qualitites of truth, fact, and fiction.

Incidentally, references to recent events such as the Rodney King beating pepper the essays throughout the book making it "fresh" and "new."

Not every chapter is as captivating as the one described above, and occasionally, some of the authors of the essays tend to become preocuppied with their knowledge of other authors and writing. And although I enjoyed the chapter on humor writing, I had hoped for much more on this subject. We need not be told that irony, satire and exaggeration are tools in humorous writing; rather we need to be shown how to use them, what works, and what doesn't.

The writing and interviewing exercises in the book are worthwhile, and I would have liked more. One example: Interview separately two people who were involved in the same event. Transcribe the interviews and consider the similarities and differences in the two versions.

This exercise is terrific for journalists as well as creative writers.

As a writer and editor, I found the book to be reaffirming as well as challenging. Many of the writing philosophies I've developed over the years are explained in exemplary fashion in this book. I am eager to work with my students on the exercises, and to share some of the chapters with my writing and editing colleagues.

Sheryl De Vore Assistant Managing Editor, Pioneer Press Senior Lecturer, Northwestern University, Journalism Department sdevore@voyager.net

Forche's winning collection for the Yale Series of Younger Poets is filled with language (sometimes emotive, sometimes deliberately stark) about the displacement of culture, love, and harmony coupled with a replacement of belief, identity, and beauty. The poems in the collection show Forche's skill in the early (not beginning) stages of her craft. Mourning and celebration of identity in "The Morning Baking" and "What It Cost" link Forche's history with the burden of passing on those oral records. "Burning the Tomato Worms," "This Is Their Fault," and "Taking Off My Clothes" demonstrate a confidence in sexuality also exhibited in such poets as Marge Piercy and Adrienne Rich. Even Forche's early lyricism in "Calling Down the Moose" and "Song Coming Toward Us" deserve attention. And no one can praise "Kalaloch" better than Poet Laureate Stanley Kunitz in the introduction to Forche's manuscript: "In its boldness and innocence and tender, sensuous delight it may very well prove to be the outstanding Sapphic poem of an era."

Forché's first book, winner of the Yale Series of Younger Poets Prize, has an implicit politicism, with poems about the political intrusions (Terrence Des Pres' term) that led to her grandparents' disclocations from Czechoslovakia and Kiev, and her as-a-matter-of-course discovery of love between women in "Kalaloch." Most poems here tend towards the personal lyric, decidedly unsolipsistic. The poet Stanley Kunitz, judge of that year's Yale Younger Series prize, introduces the collection.

This book changed my life! I couldn't put it down and the tragic though triumphant stories will never leave my mind. Susan Bergman, who writes with all the beauty of classic authors, shares the stories of many different modern-day martyrs. The pain and sorrow these people endured are beyond comprehension and yet their faith in Christ sustained them to the very end of their lives. The legacy of faith and hope that these 'Spiritual Giants' left behind are worth their weight in gold. Foxe's Book of Martyrs illuminated many a generation on the reality of Christian martyrdom but this book is for the present generation. We are called to suffer many things and this book reminds us that it is all for a wonderful purpose. God's Glory!

Susan Bergman explores the situations and reasonings behind the baffling fact that some people are not only faced with death for their faith but embrace the possibility.

These stories of martyrdom challenge the seeker to ask several questions of him or her self:

Was there death valid?

What did they die for?

Could I have done it?

This is a book about self reflection and passion for one's faith. Bergman challenges the reader to review personal beliefs, reaffirm them and throw out frivolous ones.

With obvious contemplations, Bergman reveals her own struggles with death by faith and reminds us of the importance of living by it. The struggles with faith in the face of death is the very thing that keeps the faith alive.

What an awe inspiring book!

Perhaps the most underrated, overlooked poet ever, Desnos' work is not only superior to the Frost/Coleridge/etc. you read in high school, but is also infinitely greater than that of Breton and the other surrealists, establishing the modern paradigm of poetic imagination. No other poet really comes close, except for the great Jeremy Reed (try Red-Haired Android to see what I mean). Warm, humane, and oh-so-brilliant, Desnos' poetry is absolutely, endlessly, mind-alteringly fascinating. Kudos to Carolyn Forche and William Kulik for bringing his work in such a fully-realized form to this side of the Atlantic.

A great collection of translations from one of the best surrealist poets. A well presented book with a intriguing introduction.

These poems focus on leave-taking and return, recording the experiences of rural and urban isolation, dislocation and violence, and the histories of war and reconciliation in our century. They bear witness to the way people endure and continue to love in a time of upheaval.

"Beautiful...Bowen captures the spirituality of Vietnam." --Oliver Stone

"Vietnam. The word has come to define the arrogance of American military power, the mindless violence, the sheer waste and idiocy of the Cold War. PLAYING BASKETBALL is, more than a book, an act of healing and generosity. The war doesn't go on, but the Vietnamese people have survived, and they survive in Kevin Bowen's poetry..." --Harvard Review

Chosen "Pick of the Year" by The Progressive

I've read someone dismiss and misread Carolyn Forché's second collection of poetry: that it's a partisan piece that took advantage of the situation in El Salvador in the 80s, that its politics won over its poetry. I'll admit that Forché's writing is political, but then any writing is. Coming from the very personal sphere of experience, Forché's pieces work on the tension of distance and territory that the persona(s) is/are put into, without coming off as sensational. She does not, as some people might think, exploit or exoticize the landscape. The Personal is Political without needing to be partisan and Forché handles this well, which is I guess, why a lot of people find this collection of hers most accessible. The favorite poem which is widely anthologized is the prose piece "The Colonel." But the best poem for me in the collection is still "For the Stranger".

Stunning, deep, beautiful and nerve wracking. I've carried this book with me for weeks now, rereading poems and trying to memorize parts of them. There aren't enough stars in the sky to rate this book.

Forché's poems of El Salvador in the late '70s/early '80s, in the first half of this book, could as well be written about Bosnia, Somalia, Rwanda, Chechnya, or any of another dozen places that are sites of contemporary atrocity. And the U.S.: where all of us, so many of us good people, yes, good people, live on the uppermost levels of a structure of corruption and shame, which we fail, in our stubborn blindness, to recognize: "...I go mad, for example, / in the Safeway, at the many heads / of lettuce, papayas and sugar, pineapples / and coffee, especially the coffee" ("Return," 19). Forché's purpose is not to give us the guilts, nor to turn us into evolutionaries, nor to congratulate herself as someone who is "aware," but to bring witness of objective conditions of evil in which we, as American citizens and consumers, participate.

I bought this book for my two youngest grandchildren who are 2 and 4. My daughter said that they loved it. There is so much out there to destroy a child's self-esteem, that it is nice to find a book that will affirm it for them. I hope they get years of enjoyment from this book.

I love this book. My favorite uncle used to say that all people are God's masterpieces because God sometimes mixes colors to make bonus colors and more beautiful people. "God picked out our colors," this very astute and loving man used to say. "He wanted more beauty for the world so He was always thinking up more beautiful colors to add to it."

This book affirms that sentiment; this book is a very good reflection on diversity, individuality and being human. Three cheers for this book!

As a parent in a transracial adoption, I am continually frustrated by the anorexic selection of role models for my African-American child in children's literature. I try to surround my child with deafening messages of self-love and self-worth and celebrate the beautiful brown hue! This book takes passages of the bible and translates it into self-empowering beliefs for a child of any color. The illustrations are warm and well-done, the text is simple, but poetic. The book itself is sturdy and can take a beating. I adore this book. It cost a little more than most other children's books, but it's well worth it!