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Linda Lerner should be one of the most visible of our poets in this country...she is in a special outsider group of powerful and original American poets largely ignored by Poetry Establishment forces. Her amazing energies zap her poems with high voltage. ...A vivid sexually alert woman loose in New York City and environs, a swirling rush of emotions laced with an often raunchy humor, much sensitivity to her own survival struggles and the struggles of urban folkthe sick, the homeless, the wanderers...She loves the open form, and works in a tradition of Ginsberg, Charles Plymell, and the Beats, and has guzzled much from Charles Bukowski. She is feisty, declaring that she does not relate well to authority figures... In one of her briefer poems, she attends a poetry reading... featuring three conservative poetry ladies each with three names, who curtsy behind language. Her response? She feels trapped I yearn for a Bukowski curse / beer can flung across a room / knockdown fight / till I want to puke from / all the smoke and sweat... (ROBERT PETERS Review of New & Selected Poems in Chiron Review)

Book Description
Poems which glow with an aura of a strong woman who has survived many struggles with a tender sensitivity-compassion for the human condition as well as an open, honest and vivid sharing of the erotic. ANTLER

About the Author
LINDA LERNER was born and educated in New York City. Her work has appeared in hundreds of journals throughout the country. Among them The New York Quarterly, The Christian Science Monitor, Boullabaisse, Slipstream, Home Planet News, Chiron Review, Atom Mind, The Maverick Press. This is her sixth collection of her poetry, her third with Ye Olde Font Shoppe, the last two being New & Selected Poems (1997) and Shes Back (1996). Her interview with Hayden Carruth appeared in the 50th issue of The New York Quarterly; one with Robert Peters appeared in Chiron Review 51, Summer 1997. For ten years Linda Lerner conducted an annual reading series at Polytechnic University. She edits Poets on the line, a continuing poetry anthology available only on the World Wide Web. It is semiannual, first issue appeared Spring 1995. Nos. 6 & 7 (1997/98) Vietnam Veterans / Poets was the recipient of a 1997 Puffin Foundation Grant and a Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation Grant. No. 8 appeared early in 1999, and a double millenium issue is planned. In the last few years she has given readings throughout the tri state & New England area, as well as in New Mexico, San Francisco, New Orleans, Colorado, with several planned for Seattle & the Northwest in mid 1999. She does NOT relate well to authority figures.