Ah Wind: Uncollected Poems, Young and Old is an exploration of the poetry of that grand maestra of verse, Carolyn Stoloff.

 

 

 

"Carolyn Stoloff's poetry is strong, original and shining...earthy, together, and whole."

—Carolyn Kizer

 

"Stoloff is an excellent, often powerful poet...In all her poems Stoloff works precisely and with polished craft...her eye and her insight are uniquely her own."

—Ron Schreiber in Small Press Review

 

 Of Dying to Survive

 

"At times, the poems seem steeped in the traditions of zen: the word as icon, as total arrest, the chant...She is not afraid of leading the reader through all the convolutions of her mind, that flashing, buzzing structure. "

—Janet Sylvester in Works

 

"The first poem, indeed the first line, catches you:

Hey you, switch your eyes on!

The book never lets go."

—Newsart

 

"Ecclesiastes was wrong; once in a while, there is something new under the sun."

—Paula Rankin in Newport News

 

"Carolyn Stoloff reveals herself as a stoic traveler, spiritually and geographically. There is a modern, emancipated woman's sensibility throughout her work; loneliness is the unspoken, profound assumption—but never self-pity... "

—Publishers Weekly

 

 Of Swiftly Now

 

"The poems in Swiftly Now begin crisp and vivid. The sequence gathers power as one reads, and the final climactic poems are stunning in their clarity and penetration."

—May Swenson

 

"Throughout Stoloff knows how to find the meaning behind the meaning. This is a mind that makes connections...Her unit of musical measure is neat and clean, her imagery crisp...The particular nuts in this book are small, strong, and precise, as is the spirit-born light that emerges. "

—Judith Roche in Contact II

 

"Her imagery is strong and unconventional...The personification of light, stone, silence, seems natural and is absolutely convincing. Everything in this landscape is sacred and magical; she restores our original view of the world. "

—Sonya Hess in New Mexico Humanities Review

 

 Of A Spool of Blue

 

"There is an excitement, a liveliness, in the world of Stoloff's poetry...There is verve in her poetry reminiscent of the verve in good O'Hara poems and those jazzy paintings of Piet Mondrian, such as 'Broadway Boogie-Woogie'. "

—Library Journal

 

"A Stoloff poem is always and primarily sensory...A sharpness of vision is matched by a keenness of hearing...Stoloff's art, however, transcends mere visual recapitulation. She is a reporter, a chronicler of integrity...Stoloff finds resonence in universals in the natural world as she focuses on what is elemental...and incremental...There are sounds of the street, the smells of the earth, 'the moon's inflection.' Everywhere there is a concern for the present and the past...And the spool itself becomes a metaphor for that union. "

—Karla Hammong in Rag Mag

 

 Of A Spool of Blue

 

"There is an excitement, a liveliness, in the world of Stoloff's poetry...There is verve in her poetry reminiscent of the verve in good O'Hara poems and those jazzy paintings of Piet Mondrian, such as 'Broadway Boogie-Woogie'. "

—Library Journal

 

 

 

 

 Of In the Red Meadow

 

"In the Red Meadow is a delightful long sequence, full of dream and passion. The language is stretched for its limits, and the surreal vision is comforting."

—Louis McKee in Menu

 

 

Carolyn Stoloff (1927 - 2015) was the author of Reaching for Honey (Red Hen Press), You Came to Meet Someone Else (Asylum Arts), A Spool of Blue: New and Selected Poems (Scarecrow Press), Dying to Survive (Doubleday & Co.), Swiftly Now (Ohio University Press) and Stepping Out (Unicorn Press), as well as two chapbooks, Lighter Than Night Verse and In The Red Meadow. Her poems appeared in such magazines as the New Yorker, The Nation, Cincinnati Review, Hotel Amerika, The Bitter Oleander, and Bomb, and in many anthologies including The New Yorker Book of Poems, New Directions 53, and Rising Tides, A Year in Poetry. Ms. Stoloff was awarded a National Council on the Arts Award for achievement, the Theodore Roethke Award from Poetry Northwest, and numerous other awards. She has also visited the MacDowell Colony, the UCROSS Foundation, the Wurlitzer Foundation, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, among other colonies. A poet and painter, she taught both poetry and studio art at Manhattanville College for many years. She also taught in public schools, a house of detention, and a Quaker-run halfway house for drug addicts.

  

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Ah Wind: Uncollected Poems, Young and Old
by Carolyn Stoloff
$18, paperback, 116pp
ISBN-13:  978-1-941196-08-3

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