A. E. Stallings

I appreciate Stallings' combination of modern-day experiences sprinkled with the fantastical elements of classic literature and mythology. It is an incredible unique poetic style and so clearly owned by Stallings. Stallings is able to subtly instill why the classics are still relevant to the human experience today and keep them alive, which is very important in today's technological age and constant forgetting of the ideals that transformed art into what it is today.

However, I struggled to feel connected to the emotions told through the poems. The subjects felt far away and impersonal, despite my longing to truly grasp what was being said. I will give benefit to the doubt and say that could be in part to my current life experience and being a twenty-something single woman with no children. I would love to re-read this later in life and see if my thoughts and personal attachment to the book changes.

I enjoy Stallings' voice, but this book personally was not my favorite. I would like to read some of her other volumes and get a better feel for her as a poet.… (more)

A E Stallings is my absolute favorite contemporary poet. Her poetry embraces (and modifies) poetic form and structure as well as all the other resources of the genre while revealing a very human, all too vulnerable sensibility. These poems are accessible, even playful, yet they reward exploration of their subtleties. Stallings often draws upon the Classics to sing to and about, albeit with a knowing contemporary voice. Her poems collapse millennia in shared wisdom and expand a gesture to infinity, all the while maintaining their human source and voice. Highly recommended.… (more)