“A gorgeous, thought provoking set of observations, in the lineage of some of John Berger’s writing–and not only Bento’s Sketchbook, Berger’s own book about drawing which I was also totally taken by, but the general, trustworthy marriage of aesthetic and social sensibiities that marks his writings. POSES is categorized as Poetry/Essay for the purposes of store or library bookshelves, but it slips outside either of those categories. It is closer to a kind of secular medieval lectio meditation, or to the pillow books kept in classical era Japan. As with all close-study that matters, the wider world slips into the looking, even as Lentine stays close to her situation (the model in a drawing atelier). September 11 is in these pages, the Mars Rover, deafness and the Buddhist figure of compassion, Avalokiteshvara. Mark Doty’s introduction and Richard Diebenkorn’s reproduced drawings give added pleasures of their own. From the relatively new Kelly’s Cove Press, this book is a calm beauty, meant for slow visiting, whose pages hold intelligence and the kind of emotion that stems from thoughtfulness rather than the careen. Cleanly made, various, full of thusness, this is a book somehow both pristine and deeply humanly lived through.” –Jane Hirshfield, on Goodreads.
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