Wakoski's beautiful & brutal language weaves itself into a poetric lyric that is unmatched in women's poetry today. She attacks every subject & issue with intensity and strips flesh from bone. This collection is a MUST HAVE.

Diane Wakoski is one of those poets that grabs you with her honesty and her crystalline lyrics. Although her poems are usually fiercely personal, Wakoski's strength lies in her ability not only to translate her grief, but to allow the reader to find something of themselves in it. She is a wonderful writer, whom I can recommend without reservation. My favorite piece from Emerald Ice- I Have Had To Learn To Live With My Face.

Wakoski has been writing about food for years, but this is the first collection of her poetry specifically devoted to the subject. More than a "best of" this is a perfectly mounted love-poem to sustenance, and a furthering of Wakoski's own personal mythology combined. Along with reprinted, and new, poems about food, BUTCHER'S APRON also includes the long-awaited 14th installment of her epic poem "Greed." In it Ms. Wakoski explores the "Greed for Purity" through food, again, and provides the reader with a sadly rendered still-life portrait. This is a dynamic exploration thru verse.

Wakoski's most recent work is the third in her series of "An Archaelogy of Books and Movies.: Combining pop culture references about current movies with notions on quantum physics, Wakoski's voice lends a poetic wit to present society. After over twenty books of poetry, Wakoski's "personal mythology", which involves such key players as Medea, Jason, the Steelman, and the King of Spain is still being recreated. Her poetry (which some label as "confessional" constantly reaches new stylistic heights and challenges the reader to dig deeper into themselves and explore their relationship with the worlds she creates. Her search for beauty and artistic passion in the world is still as strong. What better place to look than Vegas

I looked for this book at a book store today and could not believe that it is out of print. I read this book at least 25 years ago and find it as poignant and profound today as I did then. Diane Wakoski is truly gifted and I think every woman who has loved and lost or loved and felt betrayed must read these poems. You won't be able to forget some of them and you won't feel as though you're the only one who loved someone too much and did not receive their love in return. Put this book back in print!

I'm not someone who normally buys poetry collections, although I do like poetry, and have several collections on my shelves (including a complete works of ee cummings that I'm still working my way through and a battered hardback of the complete poetry of T.S. Eliot). So why did I pick up this collection by Wakoski? A correspondent turned me onto this passage:

"My model is your double world reality in Sleeping In Flame, which people can conveniently interpret as the physical and the psychological if they wish to ignore magic."

She is, indeed, referring to the novel by Jonathan Carroll, and this collection is full of a strange interpretation influenced by and predicated on Carroll's novels. Like the best poetry, it is so much more, as well.

The structure is unlike any other poetry collection I've ever come across. Intermixed with the poems are letters purportedly from Wakoski to Carroll and a young protege named Craig--I say purportedly because I doubt that what we see are the same words that Wakoski actually might send these two--and quotes from Nick Herbert's Quantum Reality: Beyond the New Physics. The combination is appealing to a jaded, sound-bite audience, with its quick jumps from one style and tone to the next. We may not be sure what the hell Wakoski is trying to get at, but it is kind of fun to take the ride with her. And, every once and a while, the poetry truly shines, as in the self-effacing "My $15 Lily," wherein Wakoski details a purchase mistake, or the personally-revealing "Men's Eyes," in which she starts with those famous eyes of movie stars, but somehow ends up with those eyes of her husband.

I picked up this volume because of the Carroll connection, but I plan to pick up the successor to this (a planned trilogy of volumes under the heading "The Archaeology of Movies and Books") because Wakoski is interesting in her own right.