Reviews
" Lo , a striking collection of poems by Melissa Crowe, is a pick-it-up-and-read-it straight-through collection, an 'OMG, OMG!' page-turner. Crowe takes into consideration the big questions in life as much as the pleasure of small details. . . . must-read collection."-- New York Journal of Books, "Melissa Crowe is a new kind of genius of sensory memory. Mina Loy-like, Sappho-seeming, as if those ancient fragments blossomed so many centuries later as lush nerve endings signaling desire, signaling help for the crushed blooms of a childhood betrayed, in a cycle of agonizing poems the book's other sections surround as if holding, carefully, even joyfully. Lo is a love song with a haunting melody that thrills me and makes me weep with gratitude."--Brenda Shaughnessy, judge, Iowa Poetry Prize, " Lo , rides the exclamation and imperative of its title with indefatigable tenderness and dogged reverie and confirms Crowe's place as one of contemporary poetry's most skilled raconteurs. Crowe knows attention is a kind of love, and her work resonates with the easy hum of concentrated care; what's rare, then, is how these finely spun poems carry us through the sweet and the bitter, reviving a buried bravery both necessary and all our own."--Meg Day, author, Last Psalm at Sea Level, " Lo is a devastatingly gorgeous, sigh-out-loud-every-other-line celebration of the inner life. Like a geode, an ordinary looking rock, Lo insists that there is more--more to discover inside or underneath, more in the secreted and unsaid. In these poems, Crowe cracks open the ordinary, the harrowing, even the ugly, to reveal the jewels inside. This book--this poet --is a marvel."--Maggie Smith, author, Goldenrod, " Lo rides the exclamation and imperative of its title with indefatigable tenderness and dogged reverie and confirms Crowe's place as one of contemporary poetry's most skilled raconteurs. Crowe knows attention is a kind of love, and her work resonates with the easy hum of concentrated care; what's rare, then, is how these finely spun poems carry us through the sweet and the bitter, reviving a buried bravery both necessary and all our own."--Meg Day, author, Last Psalm at Sea Level
