Kissing the Long Face of the Greyhound

If you've been combing the bookshops for a new collection of poetry that's likely to stimulate the intellect, fine-tune the senses, and simultaneously break the heart, Kissing the Long Face of the Greyhound is the volume you're after. Here, the gifted poet Yvonne Zipter exhibits an astonishing vocabulary, offering insights that perhaps we never realized we'd missed. One stunning example: in an elegiac poem for her beloved dog, she recalls the "sweet slenderness of that languorous / lick of calcium, like an ivory flute." Another: an ekphrastic take on discarded pencils, noting "how quick they are to deny their own musings"-a notion which suggests that virtually all writers and readers of poetry will savor this book.

--Marilyn L. Taylor, Poet Laureate of Wisconsin, 2009-2010