Trying to Speak

Winner of the 2004 Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Prize'The voice [in Anele Rubin's poems] is so new, and yet the movement is so artful, subtle, and modest-there are never any theatrics in these poems. They never yowl, Pay attention to me! . . . Rubin is on the same wave-length with Tomas Transtromer and Yehuda Amichai. . . . The emotional range of her poems, like theirs, is enormous, as is the range of locales, many of which I know well, and yet in Trying to Speak, they appear with a clarity that had eluded me.'- Philip Levine, Judge'Anele Rubin's poems illuminate an astonishing range of emotional experience. Visual, tactile, simple and complex, her words lure you from poem to poem-sometimes exquisite, sometimes austere, always original.'- Ruth Stone'This is a powerful and beautifully lyrical book of great wisdom, whose theme is emotional resurrection.'- Toi Derricotte