PRAISE FOR RECLAIMING THE DEAD
“These are poems of great strength and admirable fastidiousness. They present an impressive surface beneath which emotions swirl, all the more powerful for the way in which they have been suppressed. Better yet, the individual pieces accumulate so that what we have is a representation of a person, a sensibility, and a lived life. I salute Miriam Kotzin and I celebrate Reclaiming the Dead, to which I know I will return often.”
— DAVID R. SLAVITT
“What a pleasure, exploring in Miriam Kotzin’s poems the dimensions of a woman’s life–her home, marriage, betrayal, losses and grief. These quiet probings of deep feeling are offered in phrases one cannot forget. Her emotions find their destined emblems in the rooms of her house, in her flowers and the seasons, in language as sensuous as it is clear. This is a book to return to after its first reading.”
— DANIEL HOFFMAN
“Most memorable among these beautifully modulated lyric poems are the evocations of tranced stillness–a world immobilized by a porcelain decorum, a hopeless enthrallment, and the intense loneliness of living in the company of another’s indifference. Written over the years, these poems make an inner history visible as a submerged life comes to the surface, moving from the spellbound to the elegiac.”
— ELEANOR WILNER
