"The poetry of Mary Crow is as we would expect of an artist deeply troubled by her experiences. The writing is taut, lean with the struggle to persevere and become its own true cause; and by the grace and the power of her art, the poems in Borders are kept from vanishing into the pain itself, thereby making a voice and presence for herself that is the fulfillment of her search for self. In short, she is the quintessential artist who is made whole by the very processes of art. Let us welcome Mary Crow to the company of poets."-- David Ignatow

Poetry. David Ignatow is the gate-keeper between life and death in Gerald Stern's words. His last poems in LIVING IS WHAT I WANTED are vibrant with the life of struggle, as Harvey Shapiro writes, yet face the end honestly and boldly, spanning that great divide and acknowledging its necessity and its mystery. Did I fall in love to look back upon it/ as a lesson on how not to live/ if living was what I wanted? A poet of compassion, the greatest we have had, says Robert Bly. Whenever you are near Ignatow, you are near depth. Deceptively plain-spoken, David Ignatow actually is a master of the understated perception, and here he utters his last truths that are sometimes harsh, always wise and deep. Dark wonder is his song... -- Grace Schulman.