Dear Anais: My Life in Poems For You

Diana M. Raabs Dear Anaïs: My Life in Poems for You is not only a tribute to the late diarist but also a tribute to diaries themselves. Each of the books poems culled from Raabs own journal offers intimate portraitures tiny memoirs in verse. Raabs poetry is seductive in its earnestness appealing in its vulnerability mystery and enchantment. Denise Duhamel poet author of Two and Two and Queen for a Day: Selected and New Poems Raabs skill is as a poet but her passages are as intimate as a diary. She reconstructs her past mirroring Nins emotional honesty. The reader never feels voyeuristic reading the intimate passages but feels like a confidant friend and maybe even a lover. Steve Reigns Nin scholar poet and editor of My Life is Poetry In Diana Raabs imaginary world.people drip with stories / and linger in bookstores and cafés / slurping foamy cappuccinos / and nibbling chocolate cake. And the poems in Dear Anaïs are indeed rife with both stories and the extravagantly various things of this world: Laundromats and writers conferences steel-tipped boots and champagne patched jeans and paramedics blueberries and autographed photos of Paul Newman. While the book does pay homage to Anaïs Nin-to her eroticism and wry humor and exquisite journals-it also vividly evokes Raabs own life particularly her family memories. Like Nin Raab is indefatigable in her desire to commit one womans life to paper. David Starkey author of Ways of Being Dead Praise for Diana Raabs memoir Reginas Closet: Raab makes Reginas Closet a walk-in book complete with recovered documents and packed with the sumptuous minute domestic tormented and romantic details of one fully-lived life and another plucky life lived in answer to it. Molly Peacock poet author of Cornucopia: New & Selected Poems