Description: "Carolyn Hembree's For Today presents a compelling collection of contemporary poetry that chronicles the experience of living in the present. By acknowledging the fragility of the moment, Hembree's poems embrace the transformative, transcendent potential in temporary states. Angels, the natural world, women's voices, the culture of New Orleans, and other elements permeate these dense, lush, carefully wrought poems that fill the page with imagery and expression. For Today is a book for lovers of language and life"--
Brief description: Ava Leavell Haymon is the author of the poetry collections Why the House Is Made of Gingerbread, Kitchen Heat, and The Strict Economy of Fire. She teaches poetry writing in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and directs a writers' retreat center in the mountains of New Mexico.
Review Quotes: "Imagine a crown of sonnets that juxtaposes an elegy for one's father with the overwhelm of a newborn--and then, the Violent Femmes cannonball in. In this electrifying collection, Carolyn Hembree ricochets between formal tradition and the teeming, robust soundtrack of the contemporary mind: 'O streetcar's / O horn's O baby's fugal ken.' Prose poems channel the turbulence of worry and violence--and then, 'Funk Hour, done thunk enough hour.' The anchoring, longform title poem updates the flâneur tradition by activating a nimble, rangy sidewalk tour that moves with quirky visual logic across the page and offers a Whitmanesque set of lush declarations. The narrator plays word games with her daughter, Kiddo, while her thoughts are equally in turn with a friend grappling with cancer; eros and thanatos in meta-tango. In 'For Today, ' P is for praline, ping, pamphlet, parrot, proselytize, postscript, plantain, pavement, patterns, peacock. P is for damn fine poetry."--Sandra Beasley, author of Made to Explode