The Diary of Saint Marion

Gloria Monaghan's poems, with their essentially straightforward, eminently readable language, also explode with surprises-a sly wit, a sprinkling of deliciously unusual verbiage ("oaknut," "cupule," "plumule"-all in the same poem!), and a wealth of startlingly touching details (the book opens with a little hand-grenade of a poem about a tiny opera bag that "Couldn't have held much more/than a few coins for tipping a bathroom attendant/or purchasing milk"). This whole book bursts with a rare freshness to be applauded and savored. -Lloyd Schwartz, Pulitzer Prize-winning critic and author of Who's on First? New and Selected Poems