When the Body Says It’s Leaving

Poetry. Pansy Maurer-Alvarez won acclaim for her first poetry collection, DOLORES: THE ALPINE YEARS (Hanging Loose Press, 1996; available through SPD), written in the persona of an adventurous dental hygenist. Alice Notley called it a real pleasure and Ed Friedman termed it breathtakingly inviting. In this new book, she sounds a very different note, with each poem subtly growing out of some element in the previous one to form a continuous but varied song. Pansy Maurer-Alvarez is beautifully tuned in to her self and it’s an interesting self, able to translate all the seen and unseen promptings of the day into colorful, sometimes surreal, imagery and musical lines, making this a rich book, a book of hours from those lucky enough to obtain it–Harvey Shapiro.