Kissing the Long Face of the Greyhound

If youve been combing the bookshops for a new collection of poetry thats likely to stimulate the intellect fine-tune the senses and simultaneously break the heart Kissing the Long Face of the Greyhound is the volume youre after. Here the gifted poet Yvonne Zipter exhibits an astonishing vocabulary offering insights that perhaps we never realized wed missed. One stunning example: in an elegiac poem for her beloved dog she recalls the sweet slenderness of that languorous / lick of calcium like an ivory flute. Another: an ekphrastic take on discarded pencils noting how quick they are to deny their own musings-a notion which suggests that virtually all writers and readers of poetry will savor this book.-Marilyn L. Taylor Poet Laureate of Wisconsin 2009-2010