From Publishers Weekly
In "We Grow Accustomed to Dark," the first poem of her second collection, Halme cruises down "the black sash of river," past the detritus of the old South, the crass commercialism of the new, and through to her own more intimate memoirs of "the cotton shop/ where we bought summer." Seemingly on an extended, coastal vacation with her "polite Southern husband," Halme uses her moments of repose to both deflate and celebrate bourgeois life, where "a whalish blimp chubs by/ to tell us where to eat tonight." Her graceful, self-aware lines well capture "full beauty/ in moments, in flashes," particularly in "When the Sea Laughed Itself into a Foam," an eerie, near-sestina on seeing a new house overcome by the sea. Elsewhere, she muses on sexuality ("The Wanton, Harmless Folds of Dreams") relationships ("Antidote to Adultery"), parents and vegetarianism ("Girls/Metaphor/Meat"). Poems like "Beignets for Breakfast" can yield to a too-clever academic literalism, where "this town is lush with hummingbirds/ whirring a larkspur blur/ of long reflexive verbs," while others ground themselves on shoals of generic abstraction ("in the night that isn't night"). But pithy, entertaining riffs on adult life are Halme's forte, and there are plenty of them here: "The genius baby licks pollen from a gardenia/ her father holds out for the pretty neighbor./ All give in to deliciousness." Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
In Halme's (Every Substance Clothed, Univ. of Georgia Pr., 1995) straightforward second book of poetry, the female protagonist lives on the North Carolina coast and experiences rapture, beauty, and only an occasional edginess. Sex and sensuality are taken in stride, as in "Growing Accustomed to the Dark," where embedded in a litany of ordinary sights, a girl is "relieved of the burden of virginity" in one line. In "Plain Poem," an elderly man who has lost his bearings wanders into "a true, Easter egg morning" and falls asleep on an unfamiliar porch. When the police come "there is no balking or pushing to be seen/ as we turn and go inside to have spring sex." Life seems easy in these poems as anxiety is subsumed by physical beauty. This is a good book to escape with if one isn't focused on the social issues of our day. For general collections.?Ann K. van Buren, New York Univ., Sch. of Continuing Ed.Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews
paper 1-889330-20-5 The second book of poems by the author of Every Substance Clothed (1995) takes much of its inspiration from the North Carolina coastline, where Halme often lingers on the beach and, as the title poem makes clear, where she enjo ys the solitude of staying in a lighthouse. The short lyric poems in this fine collection celebrate autonomy, and the virtues of a life unfettered by children and objects. ``Autotomy,'' one of the weaker poems, directly mocks ``breeders,'' and boasts of t he poet's breasts, grown for ``pleasure.'' Elsewhere, especially in a few odd pastorals, Halme exults in her sexuality, but her general aesthetic is quite simple as she asserts in ``Plain Poem'': ``I get full beauty in moments in fleshes.'' Many of her be st, often formal, verses begin with a phrase from Marvell, though her conceits are more sensual than metaphysical. ``Grace,'' a typical piece, links things the poet sees while eating at a seaside restaurant: boys coupling on the beach, dolphins looping, a nd an odd wave formation. If goldfish could cure Narcissus (Pushing Narcissus''), she wonders what could solve the marital blues of a neighboring couple (``Antidote to Adultery''). Halme's slighter poems often venture from the hermetic coastal world she b est limnsin Objects of Desire,'' she strains for an allusion to war-torn Bosniaand her longer poems merely accrete details. Halme seeks ``the ache of paradise'' in some unlikely places, and in verse that's often smart and agreeable. -- Copyright © ;1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

ForeWord
"Most prominent is Halme's sensual commitment to language; her poems resonate with a phonetic lushness illuminating her intelligent imagery. These poems are enjoyable most notably for the pleasure of pure sound. . . . Gently peppered into her poems are flavors of mysticism, portrayed by an efficient and clever selection of words, which result in a pleasurable and unexpected unfolding. Overall, these poems read as a collection of finely crafted work . . . Halme writes as a sculptor who honors the essence of unformed stone and the core of her poems."

North Carolina Literary Review
"Halme is a poet of the present and of invention."

Book Description
Equipoise, Kathleen Halme's second book of poems is based in fact on the North Carolina coastline, the climate of these poems is one abundant with sun, salt water, and the paradoxical shore. Equally at home in formal meter and free verse, Halme explores the balancing pull of forces and discovers a refreshing version of mindfulness in daily life. Despite contemporary trends of cynicism and despair, Halme braves happiness. Even as she acknowledges that "We all live in fear/of shoreless feelings," such anxiety succumbs to her inclusive vision: "We are in the soup, singular/and swimming, roiling/with the isopods and copepods./ . . . We are delicious, surrendered to shells and jellies,/ every one soaking in sun." For readers eager to experience "the ache of paradise," these poems chart consciousness with obvious pleasure: "'Are you not a lucky one/you who hear your own mind think.'" But here is an intellect made lyrical. To celebrate the sensual core of experience, Halme's seemingly spare language is lush with assonance. In these poems, vowels have a cumulative effect, resounding, finally, in a grandiose vocative o of astonishment and joy.

From the Author
"Subject in poetry seems arbitrary to me. It is merely this morning's heat steaming the porch window beside me, giving the gardenias and rocking chairs a way, desert look, a new shaping; already they are clothed in consciousness."

From the Inside Flap
"Here is a volcanically poised and deliciously balanced book of meditative graces, of provisional lyric holdings, of sumptuous meditations shored against the ruins."-Edward Hirsch In Equipoise, her second book of poems, Kathleen Halme delivers an irresistible erotics of ocean. Based in fact on the North Carolina coastline, the climate of these poems is one abundant with sun, salt water, and the paradoxical shore. Halme's lyric ruminations are remarkable examples of a mind sublimely rooted in the physical world: "Consider how infinite/I was, walking every inch/of that orchid shaped island://no jangled thoughts, I knew/only elegances. . . . ("Lilies Showering Down"). Equally at home in formal meter and free verse, Halme explores the balancing pull of forces and discovers a multitude of reciprocities and affinities between matter and spirit. Halme accepts consciousness with obvious pleasure: "'Are you not a lucky one/you who hear your own mind think.'" But here is an intellect made lyrical. To celebrate the sensual core of experience, Halme's seemingly spare language is lush with assonance. In these poems, vowels have a cumulative effect, resounding, finally, in a grandiose vocative o of astonishment and joy. Equipoise offers a refreshing version of mindfulness in daily life. Halme braves happiness despite contemporary trends of cynicism and despair. Even as she acknowledges that "We all live in fear/of shoreless feelings," such anxiety succumbs to her inclusive vision: "We are in the soup, singular/and swimming, roiling/with the isopods and copepods./ . . . We are delicious, surrendered to shells and jellies,/ every one soaking in sun."

About the Author
Kathleen Halme's first book of poetry, Every Substance Clothed, winner of the 1995 University of Georgia Press Contemporary Poetry Series competition, was awarded the Balcones Poetry Prize. She completed her MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Michigan, where her work was awarded the Hopwood Creative Writing Award. Halme is a 1997-98 recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Poetry Fellowship. She is associate professor of English at Western Washington University in Bellingham.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

In her second book of poems, Kathleen Halme delivers an irresistible erotics of ocean. Based in fact on the North Carolina coastline, the climate of these poems is one abundant with sun, salt water, and the paradoxical shore. Halme braves happiness despite contemporary trends of cyicism and despair.

SYNOPSIS

Sarabande Books announces the February 1999 release of Bad Judgment, Cathleen Calberts second collection of poems. Calbert offers feminist fables appropriate to the millennium: tales of when the world lost meaning, of falling in love in an age of indeterminacy. Her sense of comic absurdity is uncanny: in one poem, the speaker attends a costume party as a dead debutante; in another, facile positivism is shredded by satire.

In poems that balance realistic and surrealistic narratives, irony and sentiment, Calbert records the journey of a woman reeling from a number of lossesher youth, the death of a close friend, religious faithtoward love and marriage. These poems speak directly of and from the self, and in so doing echo Whitmans conversational grace. Calbert writes an updated feminist song of herself, a song that celebrates the pleasure of being the modern woman as wild card, as other/than wife, mother, lover, friend, the woman who delights in forging herself with wit and wisdom.

The title poem, Bad Judgment, shows how the little lies we tell ourselves and others can create lives of bad faith, and as much as she would like to be consoled for her losses, reassured about the permanence of her recompenses, Calbert does not seek the easy balm of dogma. Instead of grace or God, per se, she suggests, we have perspective. And Calbert shows that we are blessed, in our quest for simplifying principles, to discover the exceptional.

Cathleen Calbert is the author of one previous collection of poetry, Lessons in Space, published by the University Press of Florida in 1997. She was a recipient of The Nation Discovery Prize in 1991, the Gordon Barber Memorial Award of The Poetry Society of America in 1994, and a writing fellowship from The Rhode Island State Council for the Arts in 1995. Her poems have appeared in The Best American Poetry 1995, Feminist Studies, The Hudson Review, The Paris Review, Ploughshares, Poetry Northwest, TriQuarterly, and elsewhere. She lives in Providence, Rhode Island, where she is an Associate Professor at Rhode Island College.

Between Dont try anything! and Shell try anything! fall (or rise: depending on her mood) Cathy Calberts startling new poems, so cool, so speculative, so disabused, so warm. Our colloquial twist has it rightwhen its good and sharp, shapely and tough, we call it bad: bad mouth, bad ass, bad judgment!

FROM THE CRITICS

New York Times Book Review

The collection builds beautifully, subtly changing shape. . . . Calberts poems are wrought from straightforward, serviceable language with the occasional welcome curlicue, and most have an easy narrative drive. Many of them are about tentatively yearning for love but hoping not to have to admit it; others are about finding it and realizing how fragile and valuable it is.

ForeWord

Award-winner and author of Lessons in Space (1997), Cathleen Calberts newest anthology reveals a spectrum of emotions; from . . . poems of loss and longing in My Dead Boyfriend and Bad Judgment to Lunatic Snow, which is contemplative and leaves one with a smile. Calbert takes everyday real experiences and combines them with a surrealistic tone to create a very deep, thought-provoking experience for the reader. . . . This collection of Calberts poetry would be a wonderful addition for high school classrooms as well as for the avid poetry connoisseur.

The Boston Sunday Globe

In her tour-de-force second book of poems, Calbert is a poet deliciously out on a limb. . . . She is brilliant, acrobatic, swooping above, around, and below. . . . Calberts strength is in her merciless, inescapable voicereminiscent in some ways of Sylivia Plath or Anne Sextonand the furious, focused ways she uses the first person to tell stories. In Bad Judgment, Cathleen Calbert dazzles, wounds, and delights.

Colorado Springs Independent

Her language is precise and a little bit rowdy. These are street-smart poems dealing with what it means to be humanto win a few, lose a few, and survive it all. Bad Judgment is good poetry.

Ploughshares

Calberts second book . . . is a searching, sometimes seething look at the traditions of love and marriage, revealing a strong voice adept in the use of irony. . . . With an elegance reminiscent of Whitman, these poems celebrate the singer as vigorously as they do the song. The result: lyrics that are witty, cynical, sharp-edged, stunning. . . . Part of the pleasure of reading Calberts poetry is watching her play: with language, with sound, with tradition, with the reader. Bad Judgment? Hardly. This is a wise book: sexy, witty, irreverent, and filled with moments of brilliance, carefully crafted by a poet who loves the sweet suck of consenting molecules so much she cant help revealing the comic absurdity and beauty of the resulting collisions.Read all 9 "From The Critics" >

WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING

Can heartlessness harbor anything besides itself, you ask? Then as you read these poems you discover what a great, despairing compassion underlies Cathleen Calberts view of our rotten world. These are truly extraordinary poems. — Hayden Carruth