Book Reveiw of "Reaching for Dawn"

I am blown away by Duane Vorhees review of my book "Reaching for Dawn."

https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-re...

"Reaching for Dawn: Poems by Ann Christine Tabaka" unfolds like series of fugues. As in her previous five collections, she claims that the contents were organized in the order in which they were written. And that may well be true (writers, after all, never prevaricate), but the volume as a whole betrays little in the way of arbitrary haphazardness. The opening piece, the titular "Reaching for Dawn" proclaims that "Past fades into the future." In Ann's book the past enlarges the future. A linked trio, "Spilled Milk" ("a liquid curtain of white"), "Raining tears," and "Fallen," follows, and they in turn are picked up in later poems ("Raining Tears" is contrapuntal to "Rainy Day Charm" and "And the Rains Come"). And so it goes, throughout the book. "Blind for a Day" resolves into "The Blink of an Eye" and "Eyes Wide Open;' "Vacant House" returns as "A House in Ruin;" "Daymare" becomes "Half Dream." Poems and lines and ideas occur and recur, bouncing off each other, reflecting upon and against themselves. Sometimes this is done in an orderly way, like the leitmotifs of a symphony, but more often it is like the ragtag riffs of a jazz performance. The book ends with "A New Day Dawns": A sleepy morning yawns. / stretching its arms across / the land. Moving into the / light, reaching for dawn....

Highly recommended!"