79 Pages
©2013
Publisher: Pelekinesis
Purchase includes: PDF

Read reviews on Amazon & Goodreads

FOR LACK OF DIAMOND YEARS is an idiosyncratic collection of short poems—most under 20 lines—that are a mixed set of free verse, unabashed counting forms like the Hay(na)ku and the Elfchen, and a very minimalist version of John Cage's mesostic form, along with a small number of poems based on colors, and a few that steal freely from traditional American songs. At its heart, FOR LACK OF DIAMOND YEARS is a quixotic narration between realms of being—from the quotidian into the sometimes numinous, sometimes murky realm of the unknown/unknown, and on into a kind of revamped transcendental—the 'what if' and 'where am I' worlds. There is a thread of praise that runs throughout—an embrace of the joys and sorrows of thinking and feeling, of love and loss.

FOR LACK of DIAMOND YEARS is pitch perfect, deeply felt yet not sentimental, an absolutely true-blue and richly unadorned dance with the language. Then there's the deft delineation of airy space within the poems - much like small songbirds hopping to flight after feeding. There isn't a dash here to be altered. A deep pleasure on the page. --Holly Anderson

These poems are extraordinary. Caroline Beasley-Baker's voice is unique, and strong, and like no other poet I know. She is the real deal, as they say - everything works, even the ravishingly brilliant ways that the poems appear on the page. For some reason, I keep thinking of Leonard Cohen's lines, 'There a crack in everything/That's how the light gets in.' --Richard Bruno

Caroline Beasley-Baker is her voice, working the faults and facets like a jeweler, but with language. She makes parallels collide, no easy trick that. --Bob Holman

Caroline Beasley-Baker is a poet and visual artist. Her poems have recently appeared online and in print in Qarrtsiluni, MungBeing Magazine, MOBIUS /The Poetry Magazine, The MOM Egg, La Fovea and volumes 5, 6, 7 of the Brevitas Festival Review of the Short Poem. Meritage Press published two chain poems done with writer/poet Holly Anderson and singer/songwriter Lisa B. Burns in The Chained Hay(na)Ku Project anthology, 2010. She frequently uses words/poems in her visual work for which she has received a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in painting and a National Endowment for the Arts in Collaborative Work. She lives in Fort Greene/Brooklyn, New York.