The Exact Place

This impressive poetry collection by Mary Ann Waters is a testament to the virtues of maturity. It is, as its title might suggest, exact, 'exact' in the full etymological sense of that word: every slurred, inaccurate, arbitrary possibility has been driven out, leaving only the necessary. But what a generous helping of the necessary Waters has left us; for The Exact Place is, in all the best senses of the term, generous.It is generous in the sweeping and various terrain of its subjects. But the most pronounced aspect of its generousity appears to derive from a source less palpable than craft, to be made possible by the capaciousness ( in both her imaginative and her lived life) of the person behind the poems. This person, who knows something not only about poetic art but about the art of living, has risked herself fully in the world and come back to us now, wiser but nowise sadder. In Water' amplitude, in her capacity for both tough and tendermindedness, and in the indefatigable energy and exuberance of her poems, The Exact Place reminds us of the poetry of another fine northwestern poet, Carolyn Kizer.-- Jonathan Holden

Literature & Fiction

Waters, Mary Ann

Poetry

Confluence Pr

Earl’s Blue Plate Special is part of the Upstate Century Series, a portrait of Upstate New York in the 20th century. It is set in Hubbards Mills, a small village in the Tug Hill Region, north of Utica and west of the Adirondacks. It’s 1955 and Earl’s 34 Hr. Breakfast Bar and Grill on the corner of Water and Main Streets is going strong. On the menu is a full plate for Mayor Chester A. Chester. There’s a National Alert coming up, with the whole country under imaginary nuclear attack; there’s a smooth-talking salesman touting Sav-All Fallout Shelters, and a frustrated widow searching for Communists in the village library. Add to the mix a canny farmer, a lascivious lawyer and an ambitious blonde, and Chester is a busy man…

Earl's Blue Plate Special

New Century Press

<p>The Names of Time presents her last poems in the order that Mary Ann Waters personally arranged them before her death from cancer in 1994. Like the poems in her highly acclaimed first volume, The Exact Place (1987), these forty poems frequently comment on her dual vocation as poet and teacher. But whether she is writing about a bull elk in Yellowstone, a joyful encounter with a black bear, the graceful hangtime of NBA star Hakeem Olijuwan, or the rueful and comic concept of the Mexican Manana, Waters always engages her subjects with plenty of wit and verve.</p>

Names of Time, The

Confluence Press

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Waters, Mary Ann. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Waters, Mary Ann

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Waters, Mary Ann. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Exact Place

The Exact Place

Earl's Blue Plate Special

Names of Time, The