The Touch by Cynthia Kraman

Startling poems of incisive intelligence and deep compassion.

Marie Ponsot finds The Touch “rich, lyrical, sharp, a big world well perceived, Cynthia Kraman’s poems are alive with real ideas. . . You have to read this. Pure pleasure.”

Bob Holman says, “The Touch, the long-awaited new book of poetry from medievalist and former punk-rocker Cynthia Kraman, tosses New Formalism on its ear, and is rock lyrics . . . resuscitates Wordsworth . . . a superb, extraordinary, shocking, unflinching, charming, hilarious, perfectly gem-cut book.”

The book is in two parts: My Heart Was Like A Sword has as its formal basis medieval number theory; Speak in the Dark’s form refers to the days of Biblical creation and the weekly life of each of us. The poet writes, “I will leave it to the reader to find her and his own macro and micro readings of the poems’ many days and nights, of nature created and creating, and the ongoing annihilations and regenerations of love and war.”

These are heights, when they are not depths. A rich vein in our new poetry.
—Richard Howard

This is a book to read and re-read, the real thing.
—Thomas Beller

This book is the seventh in the Bowery Books series.