The Forsaken Little Black Book

Jeanne Marie Beaumont, author of The poems in Julie Standig's bear the mark of strength as they reckon with the past. They probe honestly but tenderly Standig's family relationships especially the one with her mother. The things, "the proud possessions" she inherits, all tell a story. The "clutch of eggs enclosed in a glass dome...with fake red velvet, / peeling" and her ugly troll doll named Inga Stinkfinger are the not so pretty reminders of the pain, anger and sadness woven through her ancestors' lives. What emerges from these clever, often-humorous narratives is a real and loving portrait of her relatives. Indeed, the poem "Polaroid" assembles them "all in one room-their love bandaged and preserved." Wendy Fulton Steginsky, author of Objects, places, people: beloved, tolerated, or, occasionally, hated, are democratically given their own stories in Julie Standig's But, for me, it's Julie's voice, and the voices she calls up, that grab and won't let go. That voice is unafraid to be direct, funny, ironic, intimate, generous, and, sometimes, pissed off. It's in her first and last lines, embodying each poem's core: "My sun, my father My most unhappy ending" And in the titles: "Ode to an Incision" and "Dementia, a Pantoum" Pantoum, ode, duplex, ghazal, modern sonnets, and play with structure and shape complement Julie's voice. You may be sitting at her kitchen table, but Estha Weiner, author of