Winner of the 2012 NEW JERSEY POETS PRIZE
Charlotte Mandel

ROCK, VEIN, SKY

by Charlotte Mandel
ISBN 978-1-877675-62-1; 70 pp; paper; $15.00
http://www.midmarchartspress.org/poetry.html

This newest publication from Charlotte Mandel contains poems that passionately personalize headlines of natural and man-made disasters, tsunami, 9/ll, a suicide bomber’s voice to his mother, and poems lifted by loving connection to immigrant heritage, newborns, a long marriage, attention to nature. Forms include sestina, sonnets, and original organic forms.

“ . . .poem after poem tracks twenty-first century calamities. She focuses on the persistence of love despite disaster in every case, particularly the bonds between parents and children.” Read the full review by Lesley Wheeler here http://www.valpo.edu/vpr/wheelerreviewmandel.html

“What quickly strikes one about Charlotte Mandel’s seventh collection of poems - the resonantly, imagistically entitled Rock Vein Sky - is the depth of response in the work.”
Read the full review by Cynthia Hogue here http://www.dzancbooks.org/the-collagist/2010/4/14/rock-vein-sky-by-charlotte-mandel.html

“Here is a poet steeped in the clarity of memory, who dares to link public brutality with the searingly counter intuitive, who can speak of a ’vaccine to prevent/sweetness in the tastes of war,’ who can invent words powerful enough to outrun the times.”
 —  Cynthia Ozick

“Charlotte Mandel’s poems present close observation in moments of illuminating insight, poems as much felt as imagined, organic, “given” in the best sense. They are a welcome gift.”
 —  Sam Hamill

“Charlotte Mandel’s seventh collection of poetry, Rock Vein Sky, ...offers the reader a provocative portrait of the moments that comprise a life. . .” Read the full review by Kara Candito in the January 2010 issue Poet’s Quarterly