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All of the Above
Introduction by Olga Broumas Winner of the 1990 Barnard New Women Poets Prize
- GenresPoetry
104 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1991
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
August 10, 2025
“We’re orphans to the way
she folds inside herself,
each white flag raised and held a moment longer
than anyone in this outpost
of neediness can bear.”
from Live Remote
“Ecstasy is draining.
So is awe, anger, dread, tenderness”
from Nine of Clubs, Cleveland, Ohio
“..you wear yourself like a suit
I could never afford, my arms
strain and pretend.
My breath falls through its own trapdoor.”
from Lifting
“more than once in that hour
have we dawdled on the front stoop to worry
about love. Where it all ends.
That tidal emotion.
Sweet getting close, followed
by sweeter getting away.
Love fades, we say, shrugging as though
we’d hit on the real reason
the undead walk among us
only to lose their said, bewildered
faces in a mirror. Or why our mothers
carried aspirin for years
in the bottoms of purses,
though what’s solid surely wears away
to nothing in no time: white dust, a speck of lint
where the raised letters used to be.”
from The Registry of Walls and Edges
“Joy is such a simple obsession
we’ll never get it right.
But what we wouldn’t give
to be this big all the time.”
from Miniature Golf
she folds inside herself,
each white flag raised and held a moment longer
than anyone in this outpost
of neediness can bear.”
from Live Remote
“Ecstasy is draining.
So is awe, anger, dread, tenderness”
from Nine of Clubs, Cleveland, Ohio
“..you wear yourself like a suit
I could never afford, my arms
strain and pretend.
My breath falls through its own trapdoor.”
from Lifting
“more than once in that hour
have we dawdled on the front stoop to worry
about love. Where it all ends.
That tidal emotion.
Sweet getting close, followed
by sweeter getting away.
Love fades, we say, shrugging as though
we’d hit on the real reason
the undead walk among us
only to lose their said, bewildered
faces in a mirror. Or why our mothers
carried aspirin for years
in the bottoms of purses,
though what’s solid surely wears away
to nothing in no time: white dust, a speck of lint
where the raised letters used to be.”
from The Registry of Walls and Edges
“Joy is such a simple obsession
we’ll never get it right.
But what we wouldn’t give
to be this big all the time.”
from Miniature Golf
January 29, 2012
I liked Barresi's reflections on her childhood in the 1960s and 70s, her brothers and parents; and her attention to the many forms of work humans do in the world. (From "In Waking Words": "My mother asleep at the kitchen table/is a commuter except/she is already home, at work./Her cheek skims a basket of married socks,/gold toe, green toe, heel and toe,/and I am tapdancing in her big belly, my hands/making S-shapes in the water.") But on the whole the collection seemed a little disjointed to me, as did many individual poems. So the jury's still out for me on Barresi but I liked her enough to want to order some of her more recent work.
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July 21, 2017811.54 B272a 1991
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews