From Library Journal
Waldman's poems are best heard aloud or, if read, viewed as stream-of-consciousness depictions of a modern urban mind, of a "fast-speaking woman" who celebrates her awareness of the many roles a woman plays with incantations of contemporary flux. Director of St. Mark's Church In-the-Bowery Poetry Project from 1968 to 1978, this female Frank O'Hara is a reader-performer, a manic public voice whose poetry joins graffiti, collage, jazz, and conversation. Here represented by selections from ten books of poetry (1966-1988) and 19 new poems, this tough multimedia innovator-entertainer infuses her poetry with anti-literary, MTV-like electronic energies: "The refrain swells: No more, no more tears:/Then stretches to the edge of the ignoble lexicon/ Where words collide out of igneous rubble."-- Frank Allen, Regents Coll., Albany, N.Y.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Synopsis
Poems deal with learning, dreams, involvement, friendship, time, truth, love, and marriage.