1996 - Sara Peters

Today's book of poems.   1996,  Sara Peters.  House of Anansi Press.  Toronto.  2013.

Sara Peters debut book 1996 can not be a first book.  Peters is playing with us.  Clearly she has done some sort of Dorian Gray switch with an aged and accomplished senior poet locked up in her attic.  What else could it be?

The poems in this volume move effortlessly off of the page and into the reader's psyche.  With complete control of language Peters lulls the reader into gentle agreement at every turn.  When necessary she pulls out the knife, slides it between the reader's ribs and gentle reminds the reader who the boss is.

1996 is a dazzling book.  Robert Pinksy, the former Poet Laureate of the United States said the following about Peters' 1996:

"It's wonderful to enjoy a book of poetry, unreservedly.  'Enjoy' might seem the wrong word for a book pervaded by the terrible orders and disorders of desire, the overlaps of ritual and cruelty -- but yes, it is a pleasure to discover Sara Peters' way of combining imagination with purpose, wit with heart, toughness with vision, sex with intelligence, and precision with mystery:  the real mystery of human feelings and actions, deeper than mere darkness."

And I couldn't agree more.

Sara Peters is fearless.  These poems resound with a new and unique voice, so clear and precise that all the others just sound like white noise.

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