The Volcano and After

Reviews / Votes

These capacious poems are smart, passionate, witty, acutely observant, heart-stabbing. They contain multitudes, embracing both 'hot beauty' and 'thick and magnificent rage,' 'the impulse to destroy' and 'the body...keen for pleasure again,' along with a bounty of other precise nuances of thought and perception. Alicia Ostriker binds together the contradictions of our contemporary lives in an insistent music that does what all real poetry does-'it becomes true.' -- Ellen Bass Alicia Ostriker continues to grapple with and celebrate the life of a woman-wife, mother, lover, friend, teacher, and citizen of the world. Because of her age, as well as the precariousness of our times, Ostriker seems to speak even more forcefully, as if a confrontation with ultimate loss has engendered a vibrant flowering. Her devotion to the physical world-to what gives beauty and value to our lives, to pleasure-for example, her candid and brilliant explorations of sex in old age. At 80, she proclaims, she hasn't had her last sex-has always made her the rarest gift to readers who, like me, rely on poetry for example. And we have so few examples at this age! Elder stateswoman Ostriker forges ahead, more audacious and sure-footed than ever, invigorated by her task to take us with her all the way. -- Toi Derricotte In a voice absolutely her own-wild, earthy, irreverent, full of humor and surprise-Ostriker takes on nothing less than what it feels like to be alive. -- Joan Larkin