Two And Two

Reviews / Votes

Here comes the high spirits, good nature, smartass seduction, brassy intelligence, form-bending generosity, and large-hearted liberal brio of Denise Duhamel's new poems. It's all here . . . an ABC of jivespeak, a baaad translated Hong Kong action flick starring Spider Woman and her gynecologist, a multilayered heart-rending tour through the psychic landscape of 9-11, poems as Mobius strips. . . and it will make you smile too. * Albert Goldbarth * Electric, primary-colored, sizzling with speed and attitude, the poems in Two and Two confirm Denise Duhamel's reputation as a poet of high-octane high jinks, deep feelings, quicksilver shifts of tone and emotional register. Crackling with colloquial exactitude, her language is spry as a shot of Tabasco, brimming with knowledge and understanding that belie their own depths. . . . Nibble, sip at, swallow these poems: you'll feel more awake, more alive, closer to the world and to the words that give it back to us. * Eamon Grennan * Denise Duhamel's wacky poems cavort, tumble, defy gravity, and most assumptions of the rational mind. But the real feat here is to be at once dazzling and somehow resolutely human- in the way the most fantastic, reeling dreams come to us in service of the heart's unedited, plain truth. * <i>ForeWord Magazine</i> * A poet of enormous vitality and energy. . . She deftly juggles [disparate] elements so they don't clash but confront each other, making new-and often hilarious-meanings. * <i>The Orlando Sentinel</i> * People who never buy books of poetry will find a compelling reason to buy this one: at its center is a long poem constructed out of the e-mail detritus of 9/11, when citizens and survivors from all over the world poured their grief onto global listservs, as well as of news sound bites, bits of trauma-related classroom exercises, profiles of bin Laden and others, as well as elegies for the viction." * <i>Publishers Weekly</i> * Duhamel's book feels at times like a collection of pieces that test the boundaries of what poetry can do. Her poems that take emotional risks to express the inexpressible are the most successful . . . Duhamel gathers her life's fragments against chaos. Beneath a surface of playfulness in these poems lurk both mourning and hope. * Jeannine Hall Gailey * That rare book of poems-even rarer in this age of irony and emotional deferment-that moves effortlessly between unstilted candor and the verbal equivalent of slapstick humor. * <i>Barrow Street</i> *