The Properties of Breath

Embodied in THE PROPERTIES OF BREATH is an unforced sense of how the speaking voice can be conveyed as music - an ear for the properties of language, for pause, cadence, and syntactical decorum, such as constitute the mark of the true, the born poet. This distinction is finally inseparable from the properties that underlie it: an acute, even sardonic eye for the telling detail, counterbalanced by a remarkable depth and generosity of feeling, a readiness to listen for what is submerged, what does not come easily to the surface, what may indeed never be entirely uncovered. A strain of demonic intensity hints at the presence of Sylvia Plath, the feeling and the cadence are both the poet's own. -Amy Clampitt