Signature : New and Selected Poems

This new book comes so unmistakably out of Bonaro Overstreet's long intimacy with her physical and human environment that, as one segment of her emotional experience is added to another, the whole has almost the impact of an autobiography. But the quality of the poetry itself is what will give the book an assured place. By her own report, Mrs. Overstreet has, since childhood, found poetry to be an indispensable companion. She knows it so comfortably that as she moves from style to style in her own writing she does so not as a stranger. Blank verse and the ballad stanza, rhymed forms of her own designing, and a diversity of irregular, unrhymed, but always rhythmic, structures: each serves her need to report, as the case may be, a passing incident, a sudden conversion of experience into symbol, the subtle humor and tragedy of our estate, or a struggle with the interminable questions that haunt our species. Here is a book of poetry by one who moves through the world with mind, heart, and senses alert.