A magnificent collection of poems -- each one a shiny little jewel! The world comes alive through date references, NYC locales, and the fertile imagination of David Lehman! Who do YOU see in the Daily Mirror?

The Daily Mirror is David Lehman's writing at its finest. So many of the poems move as water falling and turning, fluid and full of surprise. His sense of the poetic line and his innovative use punctuation (almost none) blossom into moments that hold and propel the reader. He uses the timing of poetry in concord with the pace of a life moving and moved by people, images, and ideas. The world of particulars in his verse captures a time (our time) that the reader will want to return to again and again. These poems read like a treasure hunt that never ends. Everyone will have their favorite day in this book of daily poems.

I am not surprised that "The Daily Mirror" is fantastic. I have yet to meet a poem by David Lehman that I don't like.

That being said, I'm still deeply pleased by how much I like this book. These poems are so full of joie de vivre that every time I read one I find myself smiling.

The poems in "The Daily Mirror" are terrific in part because of their immediacy. As daily poems they comprise a kind of poetic journal; they are crafted out of the everyday. What's great is that they also transcend the mundane; they're made of ordinary stuff, but they're *poems*, with the heightened consciousness and precise language that poems require.

These poems are witty and intelligent and creative and funny and sad. I recommend them highly.

David Lehman runs a reading series, writes criticism, and edits anthologies, but what he does best is write poems, and Valentine Place is a brilliant collection of some of his best work. Lehman's poems are funny, moving, and full of drama. He is a master of many forms, yet the work itself never seems formal or stilted. Read "Wedding Song," the villanelle that opens the book ("Poetry is a criticism of life/As a jailbreak is a criticism of prison"), to sample what the book has to offer. "A Little History," "Dark Passage," and the title sequence are among the book's highlights. Sex, love, death, politics, baseball---Valentine Place has it all. My only complaint is that there are none of Lehman's sestinas in this book---he's written some of the best.

"Sometimes what you thought was an interruption/Turns out to be your life./And sometimes what you thought was your life/Turns out to have been an interruption./and yet you have to act/As if you were back in the fourth grade/And knew the right answer was Pittsburgh/But put down Bethlehem just to see what would happen-/How it would be feel to be wrong."

One reviewer termed the lines facile. They saved my life.

Without question, the depth of emotion revealed and examined by this poet is remarkable. I laughed and cried with recognition. The book drew the feelings out of me. I felt the poet's joy pain misery and glorious resolutions and made them my own. No better choice for the lovestruck or lovelorn in this reviewer's opinion. Get it today.

Even though I haven't appeared in one of David's poems since 1990's "Cambridge 1972" where I met Becky and mistook Joan Miró for a woman -- you probably haven't either! You should still buy this fantastic book of poems!

David will take you to great baseball games (10/9, 10/16, 4/3); share the best music in nearly EVERY poem -- (Mahler on 7/19; Mingus on 11/30; John Cage, Alban Berg {didn't I *first* play his violin concerto for you so many years ago!} and many more)...

You will laugh you will cry you will giggle you will sigh.

Okay, I'll leave the poetry to David.

This is the E-TICKET ride of poetry books. Get it.

In the "Evening Sun," David Lehman expresses a poetic sensibility that is rich, deep, and moving. He has captured the personal and the powerful in the memory of days. May 28 and September 18th are my favorites, and it seems odd as one is historical and the other shows the beautiful presence of the poet's voice. I've read a lot of David Lehman's verse and find remarkable here each poem's surprising, powerful, and apropos ending. I closed the "Evening Sun" longing for another poem. I think you will, too.

Finally in paperback, "The Perfect Murder" will provide intriguing delight for both newcomers and accomplished literary detectives. With this new twenty-first-century insight into the murder mystery, Lehman has now made the study of the Detective Novel as morally and historically important as any in literature today, "not only" in Lehman's words "because of the detective novel's debt to human nature but because of the possibly larger debt that human behavior owes to detective novels."

His books covers it all: history, stories, the idea of doubles and masks, the resolution of good and evil after World Wars through the detective who resolves to bring order out of chaos. David Lehman talks about the detective novel as one genre that crosses all classes. Given this election and all the open questions, let's delight in some sleuthing. We are asking Whowonit in America. His book is a Whodunit. This book is fun and includes many of David's Favorites throughout history, including Poe's Murder of the Rue Morgue and even spy novels such as LaCarre's The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. If you delight in detective novels, you'll savor this read.

This is a fabulous book, very carfully thought out and nicely produced. It contains copious biographical facts on each artist, including many who are relatively unknown. It also includes some rare works, such as the only known print by Mark Rothko. I recommend it highly.

Before this book (and the exhibition it reflects),who knew that the Abstract Expressionist painters worked not only in the big mural or wall-sized scale but also in prints, some very small? This is a brilliant act of scholarship that is a gift to every viewer's eye.

This millennium edition of Leslie's One Shot Review is an excellent reprint returning a classic to new audiences. Originally published in 1960, this volume provides work by some of the finest 20th century authors from Allen Ginsberg and Kenneth Koch to Terry Southern. Also included: Fidel Castro's 1960 address to the U.N. This millennium edition contains a narrative poem by the author commenting on the origins of the original Hasty Papers. A keepsake literary work in an oversized presentation, packed with black and white photos and illustrations.

There are but three problems I have with this collection of poetry. 1. The arrogant, self fulfilling jabberings of Mark Strand. 2. The ridiculously boring half witted remarks of the coughing crow writer, Jorie Grahm, a friend of Strand. 3. The exclusion of the brilliantly poetic and under-rated, Virginia Hamiliton Adair. Aside from these complaints, the book is well worth the ten dollars spent in the hope of resurrecting a dying art.

Leave it to James Tate. The poems in this collection are witty, profound, whimsical, and memorable. There isn't one I wouldn't finish reading if I came across it in its original source.

Unlike some of the unpolished PC rants in Rich's collection, these are poems that truly matter because they reflect on what Faulkner called "the verities of the human heart." Unlike some of the fatally over-ambitious poems in Hollander's collection, these poems are less than epic length but more than haiku -- just right.

I'm mostly a library reader, but this is the one I might actually buy.

I have been reading this series since 1993 and I feel that this is one of the strongest ones in the series. Some good choices from the better known poets, and wonderful poems by poets I was unfamiliar with, including Thomas Sayers Ellis (whose "Atomic Bride" is sure to become a classic). Though the book may drift a little towards the middle in terms of taste, Tate does a good job of mixing different aesthetics into this volume. Also, I think Tate's introduction is the most memorable I've read from the series.

A great intro to contemporary poetry. I say this because the KGB Bar Book of Poems is more than just a collection of poems, its a collection of photographs, and a collection of anecdotes. In some cases, the anecdotes outshine the poetry. Roberty Bly's account of taking a really small audience to a local apartment is charming, and Susan Wheeler's experience with a group of convicted criminals is melancholy and thoughtful. Additionally, the photograhs lend a great deal to the atmosphere in the book. The dark smokey inebriated interior of the bar shines through Star Black's trained lense. The poets and friends are always jubilant and inviting. While reading, you really feel privy to some special knowledge.

The poetry itself can be a mixed bag. It brings to mind the maxim, "you can't please all of the people all of the time." Personal favorites for me are "Santa Monica" by Charlie Smith, and David Trinidad's "Of Mere Plastic", a funny but insightful take-off of "Of Mere Being" by Wallace Stevens. I suggest you by the book and read these two last. Each poet has a short bio before their poem, listing their publications and history, so its a great lead of to some terrific books. Find a poet you like, and dig into their back-prints. Indeed, people don't read enough poetry these days. And what's a better way to start than with this seemingly "underground" compilation?

This is an exciting book. It is a sort of chronicle of the celebrated poetry reading series at the KGB Bar in the East Village of New York City. The place is like a latter-day equivalent of famous 1950s bars like the Cedar Tavern. The book includes poems, photographs, and one of the things I liked the most, anecdotes from the poets. The book has charm. It has life. And oh yes it has poetry.

Reading "The KGB Bar Book of Poems" was awesome -- it captured the experience of being there. The poems are varied, but always interesting and sometimes spectacularly good; the anecdotes are fun, the photographs charming. A great package. Hey, Dave and Star, if you have an open date, how about a reading? My first book is about to come out.

In each volume of The Best American Poetry, there are usually a handful of really good or great poems, but on a whole, I find them to disappointing. It's generally not the best American poetry in any given year. Nor is 1995's volume the 'best' but it does have a higher number of good or great poems in it. Richard Howard (1995's guest editor) does a better job than most of the other guest editors I've read. You find poems by Margaret Atwood, Rafael Campo, Ginsberg, Marilyn Hacker, Anthony Hecht, Andrw Hudgins, Kizer, Kumin, Mary Jo Salter, and a great series of poems by Molly Peacock. There is also a wonderful poem by Sally Ball. I wish the series would get back up to this level of quality.

Specialists on any of Lehman's major figures will find little here that they don't already know. Serious literary scholars will find Lehman's scanty second section, "The Ordeal of the Avant-Garde," thin gruel indeed. Lehman is a fluent, sensitive reader, but his concern to protect the NY schoolers from insufficiently appreciative criticism is, well, boring--something Ashbery, O'Hara, Koch, and Schuyler rarely are. And his theoretical ideas about the avant-garde are muddled at best. So, who should read this book? Serious high school and college students with venturesome tastes should, by all means, consume it. But they should quickly move on to Marjorie Perloff, John Shoptaw, etc. Ph.D. candidates desperate for thesis ideas would find their time with Lehman well-repaid as he liberally sprinkles his text with "someone should do a study of . . ."-isms, and he's right: somebody should. Others will have a great time, but an hour after they finish they'll be hungry again.

This bio-philisophical account is a compendium of half the origin of post-modern philosophy and procedure in art. It is admittedly vague when it comes to the Beats, the second half, but the Academics are well introduced and begin to be explained. It is better read as an introduction to post-modern alacrity than a biography. This book should be the post-modern art-history text of highschool and university classrooms. And why? What is more galvanizing than a story of four young poets who fought in a war, attended ivy league schools, lived la vie boheme, and made a literary contribution to the world? We have lost these role models today. We have celebrities that live recklessly and leave feckless leagacys behind them. We also have stiff academics who have forgotten the pleasures of life some where between Dante and Wilbur. The Last Avant-Garde is a perfect demonstration of how our "season on earth" can be both meaningful and well-lived.

An amazing book, "The Last Avant-Garde" taught me a lot about the poets, their friends, the whole milieu, in prose so clear and clean you can't believe you're reading literary criticism. I bet I'm not the only reader who comes away thinking that Ashbery and O'Hara and Schuyler and Koch could be the subject of a pretty great movie.