“SPINSTER BY THE SEA is a wonderfully dynamic book. The loveliness of Hebald’s language and imagery never bores her readers or lulls them too far into dreaminess, for she adds just the right amount of sharpness and tension. Poems such as ‘Catatonia in the Vestibule,’ ‘Lilith’s Cry,’ and ‘The Actress’ unapologetically reveal anger in the voice of the speaker. The reader is able to revel in these various voices that carry us rhythmically (and sometimes violently) through the collection, so that Carol Hebald could certainly be describing her own artistry in the poem ‘Prayer for the Little Mad Rag-Girl’”
her whip, the word
that pleases
with the precise cruelty
necessary to her music.
—Sarah Rose Exoo, INTERNATIONAL POETRY REVIEW, Spring 2005
“How often does original poetry smash into the world, shattering our selves into new configurations? Carol Hebald’s poems are as fresh and surprising as tomorrow. Lyrical mysticism joins demotic diction, the passage between high and low navigated by a syntax that takes us where we’ve never been. You must read this book.”
—Kelly Cherry
author of History, Passion, Freedom, Death, and Hope: Prose about Poetry
“One of our most mystical of poets, Carol Hebald’s work burns with intensity fired by myth and Biblical mysteries, reminding us that we cannot suppress or escape the power of song crying out from dreams and the poet’s iconic avatars.”
—David Ray
author of One Thousand Years: Poems About the Holocaust
“Carol Hebald’s poems, both beautiful and strong, display her mastery of a new form which I call ‘strict wildness.’ Never have I encountered a more fantastic imagination combined with a more rigorous sense of formal control.”
—Peter Viereck
author of Tide and Continuities
“Hebald’s poems are like jewels on fire—cool and precisely cut at first glance, then blazing with mystery and sparkle of awe when touched on closer reading. Her work insists on the sharing of personal revelation, which in turn leads the reader into her world of passionate and profound inquiry.”
—Martin Tucker
editor of Confrontation
“These poems by Carol Hebald are ‘as precise as a pin in a circle of light,’ but in the exquisite formality of their headiness, what (dis)appears is a ready passion remembered in the steepness of dream or like rapture from a root or, in a self-chastening way, still ravished by desire (‘Holy Desire’ too), subsiding seductively into quietness of mind. What was, in her memoir, The Heart Too Long Suppressed, is a far cry from that in Spinster by the Sea; yet the cry is poignantly there, the prayer, the pain, the parting of birds, ‘grief italicized,’ even ‘off-camera’ the heart undiminished.”
—Herbert Blau
Byron W. and Alice L. Lockwood Professor of the Humanities,
University of Washington
Former Associate Professor of English at University of Kansas, Carol Hebald is the author of Little Monologs, Poems (March Street Press, 2004), The Heart Too Long Suppressed: A Chronicle of Mental Illness (Northeastern University Press, 2001), and Three Blind Mice/Two Short Novels (Unicorn Press, 1989). Her web site is: www.CarolHebald.com.
from Amazon.com reviews:
A. E. Dark (Montclair, NJ)
I love these poems. They are sensuous, highly skilled, and smart, the best combination of qualities. It's hard to bring God down to earth, but Carol Hebald does so in exciting terms that make you rethink your own ideas and beliefs. There is also a moving depiction of loneliness in these poems that I know I'll return to time and again, for company.
Eliot Thomas
This is a true master poet at the height of her powers. If you are older, these exquisite poems will remind you of the passion and excitement of being young; if you are young, they will show you the depth and wondrous wisdom that can come with age; if you are a human being of any age, these poems will transport you by their perfect pitch in language and feeling from where you are today into a timeless realm of great poetry. This is a true master at the height of her powers.