From Publishers Weekly
The beauty of Jones's outstanding fifth collection (after Apocalyptic Narrative and Other Poems, 1993) lies in the way he employs control in order to evoke, not tame, the chaos of experience. Organized in four sections (Last Myths of the Pioneers, The Troubles That Women Start Are Men, Close Relations and Elemental Powers), the book begins in the vast province of American history, moves through anecdotes and tableaux of present-day life and ends with poems steeped in philosophy, sex and natural science. Although there is much beauty in Jones's world, much is also distasteful, even disgusting, and the poet never relaxes his candor. Beneath the evocations of television, Coca-Cola and space travel lie the phantoms of who we really are: weakly-lit rationalists eminently mortal despite our national myths. The middle two sections are grimmer, littered with such gothic oddities as a young man stepping gingerly over bits of a murdered man's spleen and liver while his father chats with the killer. In the last section, we find Jones digging for redemption?finding sex, eating and writing, whipsawing between the metaphysical and the physical, moving from narrative to thought, often letting light invade and even redefine the darkness he observes. "Sex" concludes: "Why should I praise the exemplary life,/ Possible only in age or failing health?/ All that I love was founded on the same premise/ As heaven: that pleasure lasts longer than death." Jones is so good, he almost makes you agree. (June) Selected by Heather McHugh as 1995 winner in the National Poetry Series, Volkman's debut collection retells myths and fairy tales in a modern, abstract voice to reveal essential, nearly private messages. In "Persephone at Home," for example, the abducted goddess is ironic and cold in accepting her fate: "I'll give no prince to this kingdom./ That thing is dead." The collection's pared-down yet inventive voice often surprises with exact rightness, as in "Reflections": "What good is a sky, I might have asked, if it will not give us new/ blue distance, if it will/ only throw our loss back at us, shabby lens." Like the girl in "Science and Industry" who chooses to play with Legos rather than "sweet-limbed cherry-cheeked/ dolls," Volkman chooses an angular, rigorously constructed style that informs her work with an exciting confidence, even though at times substance or a more radical exploration of meaning is sacrificed to style. Despite this occasional hollow effect, Volkman forcefully fuses ancient story and contemporary scene to frame an ironic and deflected commentary on modern emotional life. Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Reading Volkman's Crash's Law, a 1995 National Poetry series winner selected by Heather McHugh, provides the same difficult joy as sucking on a jawbreaker, candy that is pleasant yet hard as rock. Volkman admits that her "grasp on the essential" is through "the abstract, the elemental,/ with no slightest correlation/ to anything human." Her "angular/ unpeopled landscapes" suffer from the poetic overmanagement of a superior intellect incapable of relinquishing control. There's a squeaking of the hinges as Volkman works at language, like Legos or Tinker Toys, which she confesses she preferred to "sweet-limbed cherry-cheeked/ dolls." Too many of these cerebral, vivid poems gasp for oxygen under the influence of Sylvia Plath (e.g., a poem called "Tulips") and Theodore Roethke ("O lost regeneration!/ O saline amoeba!"). Poems left on their own-a tribute to Edith Piaf ("No Regrets") and a description of a lover's dying mother ("Theft")-have a complex, verifying presence. With difficulty, Volkman's concentrated, private discourse tries to elucidate "the dark/ of pure desire." For readers interested in the aesthetic side of contemporary poetry.Frank Allen, North Hampton Community Coll., Tannersville, Pa.Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
One of the winners of this year's National Poetry Series awards, Volkman writes dense, tense, allusive, and alliterative poems. She seems to hammer her own language out of the quarry of English, yet unlike poets who focus on language to the exclusion of emotion, Volkman's poems sear us with their passion. The subject rarely matters: Volkman gives us ecstatic poems about tulips and lilies, poems voiced by the personae of myth and folklore, dream poems, and childhood memories. These are never stories in short lines held together by narrative stitching; instead, Volkman's poems are quintessentially lyrical--blood-raw, soul-stinging, torqued by their forcefulness. A riveting, fresh collection. Patricia Monaghan

Booklist
Volkman's poems are quintessentially . . . blood raw, soul-stinging, torqued by their forcefulness. A riveting, fresh collection.

Publishers Weekly
Volkman's style informs her work with an exciting confidence.

Book Description
Winner of the 1995 National Poetry Series, judged and selected by Heather McHugh. Through myth, dream, and sensual detail, the poems in this remarkable first collection portray a hectic world plagued by a desire for psychic coherence. The book begins and ends in extremity: the opening poem, "Infernal," evokes the searing realm of an actual and metaphoric Miami, while the final poem, "New Heaven, New Earth," alludes to seeking a path through dense woods amid a blinding, obliterating blizzard. In their longing to define a set of terms for spiritual survival, these essentially lyric poems merge an evocation of contemporary consciousness with the oldest conventions of cry and song.

About the Author
Karen Volkman lives in Brooklyn, New York.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Through myth, dream, and sensual detail, the poems of this remarkable first collection portray a hectic, sensuous world plagued by desire for psychic orientation and coherence. The book begins and ends in extremity: the opening poem, "Infernal," evokes the searing realm of an actual and metaphoric Miami; in "New Heaven, New Earth," the final poem, the speaker seeks a path through dense woods amid a blinding, obliterating blizzard. In their longing to define a set of terms for spiritual survival, the poems wrestle with disjunctions and relations between mystery and reality, the metaphysical and the daily, intellect and eros, self and other, world and body. It is the ambition of these essentially lyric poems to merge an evocation of contemporary consciousness with the oldest conventions of cry and song.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

Selected by Heather McHugh as 1995 winner in the National Poetry Series, Volkman's debut collection retells myths and fairy tales in a modern, abstract voice to reveal essential, nearly private messages. In "Persephone at Home," for example, the abducted goddess is ironic and cold in accepting her fate: "I'll give no prince to this kingdom./ That thing is dead." The collection's pared-down yet inventive voice often surprises with exact rightness, as in "Reflections": "What good is a sky, I might have asked, if it will not give us new/ blue distance, if it will/ only throw our loss back at us, shabby lens." Like the girl in "Science and Industry" who chooses to play with Legos rather than "sweet-limbed cherry-cheeked/ dolls," Volkman chooses an angular, rigorously constructed style that informs her work with an exciting confidence, even though at times substance or a more radical exploration of meaning is sacrificed to style. Despite this occasional hollow effect, Volkman forcefully fuses ancient story and contemporary scene to frame an ironic and deflected commentary on modern emotional life. (June)

Library Journal