Common Ground: A Gathering of Poets from the 1986 Marshall Festival

From Library Journal\nThe poems in this book are less about a way of life than about the impact of any heartfelt experience; in Philip Dacey's "The Blizzard," a visitor from the South gets caught in some heavy weather but concludes, "If it's good enough for God it's good enough for me," a statement that covers a lot of phenomena besides snowstorms. Predictably, a handful of these poems are slack or casual, but most are well wrought, direct, and colorful. One of the most affecting is Robert L. Carothers's "My Brother," in which a man learns that his dull, affluent sibling has no memory of his youthful ecstasies. Good poetry helps us remember what is important, and this is good poetry.
- David Kirby, Florida State Univ., Tallahassee
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