From Kirkus Reviews
paper 0-8147-8104-7 Schoenbergers second volume, winner of this years NYU Press Award for Poetry, derives much of its narrative power and emotional force from her love of rivers. Despite a rough start in some confessional poems, this William and Mary professor (and coauthor of two entertainment biographies) gains in gracefulness as she escapes the confines of self, especially in the wonderful, four-act drama of Four for Theodore Roethke, which reenacts the Fall and fully lives up to her masters equally dense-textured verse. Somewhat sentimental in poems about her domestic experiences and protests during the Vietnam War, the poet elsewhere acts squeamish over some fresh venison killed by menfolk. Recipe, though, nicely counters this animal pacifism with a detailed description of catching and dressing a terrapin for stew. Schoenberger further elegizes nature in poems capturing the lazy decay in Louisiana and the persistence of both wild flora and the slow-moving river. The presence of the past and the menace in still things reveal themselves in poems describing works of art about women. A hodge-podge of disparate subjects fills out a volume that should have been slimmed down to its best lyrics. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Many rivers run through Nancy Schoenberger's third collection of poems, Long Like a River, winner of the 1997 New York University Press Prize for Poetry. From the Clark Fork ("its full house of trout the dream of a summer noon"), to the Mississippi ("long as its Indian name"), to the Amazon and Napo Rivers, these poems explore the poet's Deep South roots, plumbing memory and desire and paying homage along the way to Theodore Roethke and George Seferis.

FROM THE CRITICS

Kirkus Reviews

Schoenbergerþs second volume, winner of this yearþs NYU Press Award for Poetry, derives much of its narrative power and emotional force from her love of rivers. Despite a rough start in some confessional poems, this William and Mary professor (and coauthor of two entertainment biographies) gains in gracefulness as she escapes the confines of self, especially in the wonderful, four-act drama of þFour for Theodore Roethke,þ which reenacts the Fall and fully lives up to her masterþs equally dense-textured verse. Somewhat sentimental in poems about her domestic experiences and protests during the Vietnam War, the poet elsewhere acts squeamish over some fresh venison killed by menfolk. þRecipe,þ though, nicely counters this animal pacifism with a detailed description of catching and dressing a terrapin for stew. Schoenberger further elegizes nature in poems capturing the lazy decay in Louisiana and the persistence of both wild flora and the slow-moving river. The presence of the past and the þmenace in still thingsþ reveal themselves in poems describing works of art about women. A hodge-podge of disparate subjects fills out a volume that should have been slimmed down to its best lyrics.