Barbara Tomash

Flying in Water Barbara Tomash

Poetry. "In Barbara Tomash's beautifully latticed prose poem series, FLYING IN WATER, the reader is treated to the inner workings of a writer thinking about what it means to be a woman in language. One is reminded of Virginia Woolf's The Waves, in which the dazzling thoughts of fictive narrators push language closer to truth. The 'she' of Tomash's suite of poems is alert to all the clarity of living and its complex shadows. These poems are gem-like, using 'her voice's cool sleeve, ' 'the perfect tool to hammer white open.' And in all of the poems there is also the weight of eternity, of worlds continuing after this particular voices has ended"--Maxine Chernoff