All Odd and Splendid

Reviews / Votes

"[All Odd and Splendid] is about how life looks and feels when fundamental categories of being have come unmoored. . . . A life as the mother of a daughter becomes [Raz's] life as the mother of a son. Rather than mending this rip in the fabric of her existence, Raz magnifies it, turning gender's failure to stabilize identity into a principle of representation."-Joy Ladin, the Forward "'Why have I come / to arbitrary limits?' asks Hilda Raz, provocatively, in this stunning . . . collection of poems that tests the generative potential of language and discovers its power to reinvent us. Narratives are stretched, bodies transformed, and deaths defied-all in the miracle that is this poet's unyielding will to speak truth."-Raphael Campo, author of The Enemy "Hilda Raz's All Odd and Splendid is unique, accomplished, and turns the 'genderings' of the world upside down, as they need be turned upside down. The poems are psychologically innovative and deft. There are tones of a masterpiece in this work."-John Kinsella, author of The New Arcadia "[This is] a gentle quotidian view of the world that then twists toward the sardonic/tragic; or else a steady drumbeat of hard life, out of which happiness and beauty flower."-Janet Burroway, author of Writing Fiction "The poems evoke a sense of outreach, a powerful awareness of connection and need to care for one another. By example, Raz shows the importance of trying hard to understand others in all their strangeness."-Floyd Skloot, author of The End of Dreams