Lifer

LIFER is the long wished-for book by Annette Basalyga, who probably never knew that her classmates in the famous Iowa Writers' Workshop of the sixties thought her the most graceful writer in the room. Now, she has put together a collection that reminds us. But it's far more. With delicate precision, she applies an original, surgical imagination to circumstance and memory. Leave it to this poet of a lifetime to reconfirm for us what poetry is, beyond performance, when it matters.LIFER is detailed, beautiful and courageous.—Marvin Bell