Description: "The poems in A Gray Realm the Ocean were all written under the influence of art-specifically, abstract visual art by women. Although all these poems were, of course and as usual, affected by other poems and poets, each was also written in response to a particular artist's work"--
Brief description: Jennifer Atkinson published five books of poetry before A Gray Realm the Ocean, most recently The Thinking Eye and Canticle of the Night Path, both from Free Verse Editions/ Parlor Press. She is recently retired from George Mason University, where she taught in the MFA and BFA programs in Poetry Writing. She lives in northern Virginia.
Review Quotes: Lines under, lines over...lines after lines. So poetry goes, so painting. A chalkboard, a mountain, the tideline, an ocean. Look, look again, says Jennifer Atkinson in A Gray Realm the Ocean, a reading experience most worthy of repetition. 'Is it life catching up with form? Or vice versa' I don't know, or I didn't, but what carried me through felt beautifully infinitesimal and larger than life. at once. Again and again, I will return to this cherished book.---Sally Keith