For Lack of Diamond Years
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These poems are extraordinary. Caroline Beasley-Baker's voice is unique, and strong, and like no other poet I know. She is the real deal, as they say - everything works, even the ravishingly brilliant ways that the poems appear on the page. For some reason, I keep thinking of Leonard Cohen's lines, 'There a crack in everything/That's how the light gets in.'
-Richard Bruno
. . . vibrant, cut-shining poems . . .
-Virgina McClure
. . . In Caroline Beasley-Baker's FOR LACK of DIAMOND YEARS, the spirit of Gerard Manley Hopkins presides over a series of short poems and mesostics that are both luminous and fiercely original.
-Wendy Galgan/Bibliotekos
I love these poems . . . stream-of-consciousness visionary poems, not only in the tradition of Hopkins, but also John Berryman. I love the imagery, the metaphorical leaps, the range and tensions of perspective, often within the same line or two, and the way love/passion, or the need for this is always somehow present, even, like an underground river, when it isn't seen.
-Andy Kaufman
Caroline Beasley-Baker is her voice, working the faults and facets like a jeweler, but with language. She makes parallels collide, no easy trick that.
-Bob Holman
FOR LACK of DIAMOND YEARS is pitch perfect, deeply felt yet not sentimental, an absolutely true-blue and richly unadorned dance with the language. Then there's the deft delineation of airy space within the poems-much like small songbirds hopping to flight after feeding. There isn't a dash here to be altered. A deep pleasure on the page.
-Holly Anderson
. . . It's really very rare, for a visual artist to so completely translate or, more precisely, transcribe her visual sense into words. For this reason, for me, Beasley-Baker's poems are a significant achievement.
-Robert J. Mahoney/The The Poetry
Lovers of poetry will delight in Caroline Beasley-Baker's unique style and vision. With pushing, those with a poetry aversion may be won over for no other reason than to revel in the manipulation of words on the page.
-Lindsay Grattan/VOYA
