A great and frequently subversive book by a lyric poet at the height
of her craft.
Throughout her seven critically acclaimed collections, Sidney Wade has
established herself as a poet with a serious but light touch, capable of
the clarity and inventiveness it takes to work a problem to both
pleasure and resolution. Playing with and challenging form in all
directions, the 27 new and 96 selected poems in Deep Gossip bristle
with a sly wit that trips and delights the reader. Inspired by
landscape, language, music, and living things, as well as the occasional
bout of political outrage, Deep Gossip is a smart collection.
Praise for Other Books by Sidney Wade
"The quick, closely observed poems in Sidney Wade's beguiling Bird
Book move from page to page like their subjects--in flight, on air, a
murmuration sweeping across the horizon."--William Souder
"Sidney Wade's linguistic and philosophical turns in Bird Book confirm
that she is both the supreme heir to Wallace Stevens and one of the most
original poets in the language."--Randall Mann
"This is a beautiful, wise, and timely collection."--Daniel Anderson
"As impressive and thrillingly exact as these poems are concerning
matters ornithological, it is the exquisite music --'earth-sprung,
bright, and resonant'--of Wade's radically short line that so enchants
me, the free play of interlinear rhyme, phonemic harmonies, and small
bursts of metrical rhythms that yield more vitality and delight than any
gathering of poems I have encountered in a very long time."--B. H.
Fairchild
"Her poems [are] . . . a particular and splendid instance of what
Hopkins meant by 'poetry proper, the language of inspiration.'
"--Richard Howard
