FROM THE PUBLISHER

Here is a feast for fans of Peter Balakian, a brilliant selection traversing a remarkable 25-year career. Transcending both the overwrought confession and the cryptic abstraction that plague so much of contemporary verse, Balakian writes with restrained power, exploring everything from the sublime depths of nature to the nightmare world of human history, ocean-fishing along the Jersey shore to genocide in Armenia. In language that is sensuous and inventive, Balakian's poetry creates vivid textured worlds of startling leaps—fusing, for example the making of blood pudding with the growth of a fetus in one poes—to reveal the connections that run through all things.

About the Author:
Peter Balakian is Donald M. and Constance H. Rebar Professor of the Humanities in the department of English at Colgate University. He has published four books of poems—Father Fisheye, Sad Days of Light, Reply from Wilderness Island, and Dyer's Thistle. He is the recipient of many prizes, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, and his memoir, Black Dog of Fate, won the PEN/Martha Albrand Prize. He lives in Hamilton, NY, with his wife and two children.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

It should come as no surprise that Balakian best known for his 1997 memoir, Black Dog of Fate, which juxtaposed memories of a 1950's Jersey childhood with the Armenian genocide of 1915 has also born witness to the Armenian genocide in his poetry. Some of his best poems on the subject ("The History of Armenia"; "The Claim") appeared early on in his poetic career, and their reappearance after Black Dog should win them new readers. There are plenty of poems about Balakian's other obsession his New Jersey youth as well as poems about fishing, painters, flowers and families, all of which were well-documented in his four previous poetry collections. The new poems, which kick off this selection, map out familiar terrain, even as the poet acknowledges that he sees "no light.// Just yourself/ staring back at you/ in middle age,// as if the novocaine/ of the sea urchin/ froze your lids." Numbed by "baby-boom melodrama," Balakian's speaker sees himself as an itinerant academic "on sabbatical and looking for/ a place to write." Balakian rises above such poetic haze when writing about events like Woodstock ("And when the Shaman spread his yellow robe like the sun/ he was all teeth and amp"), but more often than not, middle-class boomer angst seems to have run off with the muse, and prosaic sentiment stands in for lyric urgency. (Mar.) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

Justly famous for his poems about genocide in his native Armenia, Balakian offers the reader a selection of new poems as well as a generous sampling of slightly edited versions of poems from his earlier collections, including Father Fisheye and Dyer's Thistle. Always lush in imagery and rich in nuance, Balakian's verse often takes the form of unique syntheses in which a vividly realized place becomes the starting point for a series of deeply felt associations. In "Yorkshire Dales," he grounds the poem firmly in the "limestone rocks" of England while simultaneously recording the speech of his son and daughter. All of this takes place under a "dome-like" sky that covers the Regency dining room of the Bront sisters but also admits the Motown lyrics of Jackie Wilson, transporting the entire family "higher and higher." A gifted phrasemaker, Balakian leaves the reader with memorable images: Water "slides like a black eel/ through weir and hooks of grass"; the wind "blows the silk kimonos/ off the delphiniums." Accessible and graphic, June-tree ranks as one of the most significant poetry collections of 2001; it will also be of interest to readers of his memoir, Black Dog of Fate. Recommended for all poetry collections. Daniel L. Guillory, Millikin Univ., Decatur, IL Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

This volume gathers poems from the author's previous collections, which span the last quarter of the 20th century, and adds more than a dozen new ones. The backdrop to this body of work is the poet's Armenian heritage as it comes into contact, and conflict, with his American upbringing. In many regards his is an experience typical for members of the first native-born generation. Much of the family history and lore imparted to him is only dimly or reluctantly recalled. It's as though he's being spared the truth. On the other hand, life in contemporary America is often irritatingly in one's face. Yet, deftly, the poet manages to bridge the cultural gap. "In the glare of cell-phone light on the window, I saw hummingbirds in the mango blossoms." Where other contemporary poets have simply tossed the fragments together or gone off on impossible-to-follow thought associations, Balakian tries to integrate these disparate ways of looking at the world. In "Lowlands," for example, he weaves together several strands of past, present, and future events and never loses control over them. He also avoids the pitfall of sermonizing in dealing with historical injustices, seeing genocide as a crime humanity commits against itself. For him, "history is a man's breath," giving out what it takes in. Yet his seriousness does not preclude a finely developed sense of irony. In the poem "Ellis Island," he states, "Here is everything you'll never need." An impressive collection of solid work, in which the author's voice is sure and sonorous.