A. E. StallingsRezensionen

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.

Like the title, Like plays with words, poetic forms; it compares ancient and modern cultures through myths (old and new)--all with the subtle mastery of a mature poet. A E Stallings is, I must admit, my favorite contemporary poet, bar none. I have followed her publications and Like lives up to its forebears. Highly recommended.

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.

With an academic background in English literature, and a good bit of reading under my belt, I have found my contemporary poetic voice in A E Stallings: a woman's sensibility, a poet's wondrous eye and ear for metaphor, a joy in (and playing with) poetic forms, a background in Classics. Indeed, Stallings sometimes dips into Greek mythology to refresh contemporary experience even as she renders contemporary experience immediate, even (beautifully) painful. I actually have this book on my nightstand and read a few poems each night. They always yield a new twist, a new delight in form or implication, a new pleasure. Stallings is my absolute favorite modern poet, bar none, and has been for several years.

Whimsical take-off on Homer's Iliad, involving gods and various animals. Told in verse. Adorable line drawings illustrating the action page by page.
Interesting introductions along with the text repeated without illustrations.

I liked these poems, especially the limericks about mythological characters. However, I think that her volume Archaic Smiles was a better collection.½

I have always had a fondness for things Greek, especially the ancient myths and gods. Many of these poems combine people and ideas from these with a modern-day style. Most of the poems deal with death and the afterlife (generally not my favorite topic); of these, I loved "Persephone Writes a Letter to Her Mother", "Cardinal Numbers", "Elegy for a Loggerhead Turtle Washed up on a South Carolina Beach" & "The Machines Mourn the Passing of People".½

Lovely and thought provoking.