Love and the Eye

In Love and the Eye there is no world. only images of a world holding so fast to us we are more nature than human, more landscape than flesh. There is a delicate elegance in the shifting gaze of these poems. One leans into their beauty because of all the ways they do not settle down. because of all the ways they insist on seeing---Claudia Rankine

Here is a voice that will stay with you long after the book is closed and safely on your shelf. A haunting, once-upon-a-time voice. as if a wide-eyed child lost in the woods forever and a day emerged. finally, to speak: "A lark flew through the word so/l loved it." With the lightest of touches. Newbern has given us a touching and magical book---Alice Friman

Nothing is out of reach for this very fine poet---not childhood or love, not the old, the mad, the body, not Gandhi's ashes or caves in greece. "To grieve is my occupation." she tells us as she opens so much more...speaking of a thing a told" so deeply into my ear it would begin/to bloom there."---Marianne Boruch

Love and the Eye is playful and grave, wry and intimate. self-deprecating and passionate. It is precise and yet has the sideways movement of dreams. Newbern speaks in a voice completely her own, showing us everything from an angle we hadn't seen with surprising and revelatory clarity. A book to be welcomed and cherished.---Reginald Gibbons

Newbern gives us a transformative vision in which beauty is evident everywhere: mosquitoes as "a thousand/black lace stars/hugging the white walls: sadness that hangs.../like a sumptuous grape." Shining sadness limns these poems---quiet grief like the dark edge of a cloud or field: ever-present and capable of making one who loves love harder.---Natasha Trethewey