Description:
Hurricane Walk is Diann Blakely's first volume of poetry. Originally published in 1992, it was named one of the ten best verse collections published that year by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. With this collection, Blakely artfully mines the empathic center of each poem, fearlessly crafting an achingly personal portrait of contemporary life and family that is both sweet and razor sharp.
"What poetry does best and perhaps does most plaintively," Blakely has said, "is to remind us of the absences and losses of the world we currently suffer and revel in. It is very much the language of intimacy." And this is what her work achieves at its best. Blakley wrings a refined sense of intimacy from her carefully crafted verses, revealing the fragile essence of the female experience and, moreover, of the human condition.Brief description:
Her first volume of poetry, Hurricane Walk, was published under the name Diann Blakely Shoaf in 1992 and included among the St. Louis Post Dispatch's ten best verse collections of the year. Her second book, Farewell, My Lovelies, published in 2000 and influenced by "noir" shading, was listed as a Choice of the Academy of American Poets' Book Club. Her third volume, Cities of Flesh and the Dead, won Elixir Press's 7th annual publication prize after being distinguished by the Poetry Society of America's Alice Fay di Castagnola Award, given for a year's best manuscript-in-progress Anthologized in several volumes, including Best American Poetry 2003 and Pushcart Prize Anthologies XIX and XX.
Her poetry appeared in Denver Quarterly, Harvard Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Ploughshares, Shenandoah, Southern Humaniteis Review, Southern Review, Verse, and Pushcart.
Review Quotes: Blakely plunges you right into the emotional heart of each poem, mincing no words as she creates an extraordinary picture of contemporary life.--Pat Monaghan "Booklist"