The Various Reasons of Light

by Renee Ashley

Book by Ashley, Renee

Genres: Poetry

80 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 1998

About the author

Renée Ashley is the author of three volumes of poetry: Salt (University of Wisconsin Press, 1992), winner of the Brittingham Prize in Poetry, The Various Reasons of Light, The Revisionist's Dream (Avocet Press, 1998), and a chapbook, The Museum of Lost Wings (Hill-Stead Museum Press). She is also the author of the novel Someplace Like This (Permanent Press, 2003). She has received fellowships from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts. She is a contributing editor to The Literary Review, and is on the faculty of Fairleigh Dickinson University's low-residency MFA Program in Creative Writing.

Reviews

[Paula · Rating 3 out of 5]

Seemed like an amateur-ish collection as I read it (which made me wonder why/how so many of the poems had already been published in literary magazines and journals with high reputations.)The lines were really long and prosaic for poetry, even in the formal verse that's included. Sound qualities were lacking somewhat, and almost every poem is about or includes angels (so the themes and images are a bit repetitive). Some of the words used are unusual for poetry, which might be nice except that many are so difficult to pronounce that the ingenuity is lost before it can be found.

Okay for people who like to read about angels but don't have the training to read serious poetry.