From Library Journal
Skinner's second book contains exquisitely crafted poems distinguished by the desire to work within traditional forms and to explore intensely personal emotionstwo desires that often work against each other. Though admirably conceived, a first section of "prayers" offers several poems that end by substituting craft for sincerity when the subjects stray from spirituality. The third section's 19 "Sonnets to My Daughters Twenty Years in the Future" are better suited to the loosely formal structure, though some are overextended and others end too abruptly. But in the second section, which breaks out of the rigid formal structure, the poems improve dramatically, showing the poet at his best. Rochelle Ratner, formerly Poetry Editor, "Soho Weekly News," New YorkCopyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From the Back Cover
Amplitude: New and Selected Poems

by Tess Gallagher

"A masterpiece of connection--"--Ted Gioia, San Francisco Chronicle

"Gallagher's poems are rooted in a relentlessly willed attempt to come to terms with, to find words for, the fullness of life."--Young Adult Paperback Book Guide

"The great joy in reading Tess Gallagher's poetry in Amplitude comes from discovering that she can and will do anything with language."--Bin Ramke, The Bloomsbury Review

"It's that seesaw combination of earthiness and the ethereal, of the public and the intimate, of the difficult closeness of family (one of her best subjects) and wider concerns, all related in a firm and passionate yet subdued voice, that makes Tess Gallagher a great poet."--Frederick Koeppel, The Commercial Appeal

"In Amplitude Tess Gallagher conjures the Northwest's landscape of high green trees and shifting gray water, its climate of rain and subdued moonlight. Water-drenched and shady, the place encourages drifting or floating, rather than sudden turns, sharp edges. Gallagher's poems are full of departure and return, release and embrace--we know where home is, as we come to know her mother who felled trees and was once beautiful, her brother who repeats their father's life as a logger, their shared past as children who built cabins in the woods."--Emily Leider, San Francisco Chronicle

"Gallagher's new collection, Amplitude, signals a shift away from the stark lyric cry. She pays increasing attention to storytelling within the poem, turning toward a poetic hybrid known as the narrative-lyric. While her poetry is no less dense in its imagery, no less intricate a structue of language, Gallagher's storytelling mode offers a more generous invitation to the reader than the abstruse "raw" strain of contemporary verse."--Jenny wyatt, Seattle Weekly

FROM THE CRITICS

Library Journal