Friction

By Claire Bateman

Selected by Naomi Shihab Nye as the sixth winner of the Eighth Mountain Poetry Prize.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0933377487
• ISBN13: 9780933377486
• Release Date: December 1998
• Publisher: Eighth Mountain Press
• Length: 140 Pages
• Weight: 0.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 6.1" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

A truly amazing collection

Drawing on a wealth of knowledge--celestial, biological, historical, literary--and beautifully written, all of the poems in this book are worth reading and rereading. The range of subject matter is breathtaking, from van Leeuwenhoek and his microscope to Frank Capra's films to human prehistory; and the threads that bind the images together are at once original and familiar in the way that truly great writers make you see something from such an unfamiliar but valid perspective that life, briefly, comes into focus. Moreover, the language of the poems is simultaneously natural, evocative, and fresh, covering a wide spectrum of styles and emotions, from exquisitely detailed free verse to eloquent Victorian to the narrative drive of the central poem, "Damage Assessment." In short, these poems have everything. It's the first book of poetry I've ever read cover to cover. Read it, and you will forever rejoice. Besides, who could resist a series of poems on "the intimate recollections of Frankenstein's creature"?