Publishers
Weekly:
“The marvelous specificities of her poems demonstrate a
fierce and admirable passion . . . with a steadfast gaze at
the natural world as intense and perfectly rendered as that
of Rilke’s panther.”
Alan Michael Parker, Chelsea
Magazine:
“Fogel demonstrates a fine sense of stanza--an
understanding of poetic closure and dramatic timing far
beyond that of most free-verse poets. . . . ‘Ravishing
perception’ seems to pervade Fogel’s work, and to do so
both elegantly and powerfully. . . . One can see the dance
of intellect from word to word [as she] dramatize[s] the
complexities of consciousness.”
David Mehegan, Boston
Globe:
“Fogel’s perspective fascinates . . . has its own concrete
effect on the heart.”
Charles Simic:
“To read Alice Fogel’s poems is to enter, or
rather to be drawn, always toward an inner space. Every
image, every word unlocks a secret door into a farther
room. That, of course, takes art, and that is precisely
what Fogel has plenty of. . . . Her poems shine with
intelligence. Brooding and meditative, Fogel is a poet
alert to every nuance of the inner life, a true
phenomenologist of the soul in that New England tradition
to which both Emily Dickinson and Jane Kenyon belong. She
is one of the best poets we have.”
Laurel Blossom, Small Press
Review:
“Fogel is a talented writer . . . capable of interesting
risks.”
Marion Stocking, Beloit Poetry
Journal:
“I like the surprises in the language . . . to keep turning
in the mind. The whole book (I Love This Dark
World) is a joy.”
Robert Hass, Washington Post:
Fogel’s work “twines the themes of
complicated subjects, often in mesmerizing form.”
Jane
Eklund, Monadnock
Ledger:
"There's alchemy here. You
can't help but want to lose yourself in Fogel's landscapes,
to follow the choreography of her poetry to that place
that's so empty it's full. This is lovely work, carefully
honed and beautifully rendered and filled with the echoes
of time."
Bookconscious:
"Multi-dimensional. With each
subsequent reading you notice some detail you didn't see
before, and the way she shapes meaning with words adds to
the layered feeling of her lush pieces, like elaborately
pieced, intricately stitched quilts."
Baron
Wormser:
“[She pays]
attention to how one thing becomes another in the sense of
transformation. . . . This creates a sort of dance-like,
fugue-like quality in her poems where one form or state of
being turns into another before our astonished eyes. Hence
the musicality and intensity of her work, reveal[ing] to us
through the ministry of language the enormity of what is
there in each moment of life—its presence and its subtlety
and its force.”
Eileen
Tabios, Galatea:
"Fogel’s collection contains poems that begin in
nature but move on deftly to reveal an element alchemized
from what simmers within the human unconscious. . . .
In this poetry collection, there admirably is that element
I don’t notice enough in contemporary poetry: Joy.
These poems by Fogel, a poet described as living “off the
grid” in New Hampshire, do not
use nature to humble the human. Rather, they uplift in the
way heightened consciousness makes one more aware."
Reader Review:
". . . a gift for bringing the most subtle states of being
and awareness into language."