Synopses & Reviews
Winner of the 1978 Yale Series of Younger Poets competition.In her honest, quiet way, Ullman puts to poetic use the self-generating power that lies within her. No restraint is so permanent it cannot be cast off, no confinement so total release cannot be won. Her freedom is the ideal freedom of the poet, the mind going on, distilling, adding, converting, supplementing and complementing, certain of the real relationship of response to event no matter how remote or peripheral the events are or how ineffectual or unrelated the responses seem.-Richard Hugo
Review
"This poet's dispassionate voice conserves not only words but also emotions. To what advantage can economy of words be in a poem if it lacks emotion? Ullman's poems provoke this question but do not provide an answer. This is why her poems are not pleasing to the reader. In her own words: 'If you cannot cover a question with words / you let it ask you too much.' The reader perceives of her limitations; she advises to ask only so much. Though it is wise to know one's limitations, one still needs to ask that difficult question to find out what the limitations are. Philosophical discussion aside, Ullman is a skilled maker of poems. To explore a self, or selves within a self, she makes pronouns work for her as is rarely possible. But, for those of us who want emotion, we need at least an explanation of why it is absent." Reviewed by Daniel Weiss, Virginia Quarterly Review (Copyright 2006 Virginia Quarterly Review)
Synopsis
Winner of the 1978 Yale Series of Younger Poets competition