Adrienne Rich is a poet for everyone - especially those who say they don't like poetry - and the Dream of a Common Language is her most fascinating and accessible collection to date. Think poetry is boring, pretentious or hackneyed? Open up to "Love Poems" and find 32 sultry and pain-stakingly honest celebrations of lesbian love and urban survival. Rich has recently been receiving the wide recognition she deserves, and she will perhaps be the one to convince Americans to open their poetry books again.

In The Dream of a Common Language, the poetry of Adrienne Rich reaches a realm of pure beauty. Rich cuts away the verbal excesses sometimes found in her other works and leaves the vibrant words to stand alone in their powerful simplicity. The reader finds herself emerged in the common language of love, pain, hope, and longing. Only when the final poem has been read, is she able to emerge, gasping, and view the world through vision forever altered by having seen through the eyes of Adrienne Rich

A thinker's book. Wonderful to read Rukeyser wrestle with and explain life, art, thought. She is by turns poet, biographer, essayist and character. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Her art and criticism explore the same themes. The effect is surprisingly consistent in a book comprised of several incomplete selections. If you have any doubts, find a poem or two of hers and try it on for size (Gauley Bridge, for example). If you're fascinated, try this volume. Here's a sample. Rukeyser on poetry (from The Life of Poetry): "A first-rate scientist, or a fine prose writer, is able to say, 'How can I know a good poem? I can tell an honest piece of work in my own field from a phony piece of work, but how can I tell a fine poem from a phony poem? And what has to be said to such a question is that these are people who cannot trust their emotional reactions, their total reactions."

Muriel Rukeyser was certainly a terrific and fascinating poet. These are strange and striking creations, and originality is present on every page. I don't know how she got stuck with Adrienne Rich as her introducer, but one may skip that and go on to a memorable experience. Rukeyser was a true original.

jazz poets are a dime a dozen, so when I picked up this slim volume of poetry I had dim hopes. WOw, what a surprise; what verse and verve. Ed Pavlic's work is without a doubt the most profound, original, spirited and unpredictable in the poetry world today. Far beyond jazz, he lifts the word into that rare sphere where music and verse meet. Pass the word; this is a poet to watch and read and tell your friends about.

An excellent mixture of Jazz Rhythms and the spoken word. A true mixture of Art, Music,Emotion, and articulation. A must have for anyone who loves Poetry!

This book is a must for anyone interested in the 3 title poets. Wendy Martin does an excellent job in her analysis of these great female poets. She provides necessary backgound information along with correlative interpretation and history of the authors' works. This book is not only a informative and helpful tool, but it is an interesting read.

Adrienne Rich was one of the first feminist writers of her time. After her husbands death in 1970, she went on as angry young woman who wasn't about to let life grind her down. This collection of poetry showcases some of her best work ever, and it well worth the read.

If offered the choice between money and poetry, I'd have to know two things:

How much money?
and
Who's poetry?

Through the first two-thirds of this collection, though occasionally spotting a treasure like "The Roofwalker" and "Trees" I struggle to recognize something I can't give up.
But in the selections from -The Will to Change- and -Diving into the Wreck- I am rest-assured. Rich's precise, scorching poems refuse to be forgotten and make me ask myself, feeling lucky: what if I had never read this?