Waking

One of our most gifted poets Sleigh reveals with vigor and delicacy theconnections forged between the dead and the living. <strong>Waking</strong> is a movingna... » 

One of our most gifted poets Sleigh reveals with vigor and delicacy theconnections forged between the dead and the living. Waking is a movingnarrative of the creation of the self.. . . . it takes a book like Tom Sleighs Waking to remind us of all that wasmost innately stirring and necessary about the confessional insurrection. . . .in Waking Sleigh proves himself worthy of spinning gold thread from the strawof sincerity elevating his socalled confessions from the merely revealing tothe durably revelatory.David Barber PoetrySleigh is a consummate stylist whose formal control and exploitation ofconvention is graceful and calm. And yet it is from the calm and steady controlthat some of Sleighs most emotionally powerful moments are acheived. . ..Waking is one of the strongest collections of poems to appear in the last fewyears.Michael Collier Partisan ReviewTom Sleighs second book of poems Waking is so fine one can hardly dojustice to it in a review. The second poem Ending is a remarkable piece ofwork which introduces the notion of the hookwhich hooks us to life evenwhile it kills us. It is a presence of painful mortality which haunts the restof the book.Liz Rosenberg New York Times Book ReviewWaking handsomely and affirmatively demonstrates its own clean and demandingpremise ones imagination is awakened to life by the burden of mortality. Onereads in these poems a view not of the poets suffering but of our owntemporal joys and sorrows.Jay Meek Hungry Mind ReviewWith the publication of Waking his second collection of poems Tom Sleighestablishes his voice among the strongest of his generation.A poet of subjectand craft his skill allows him to avoid the slackness of much free verse andat the same time break free of the stiff old numbers in order to create aspoken language of rhythmic intensity and eloquence. . . . In this book TomSleighs vigilance provide «