In the small space a chapbook occupies, every poem has to be terrific, and each one has to be working hard, adding to the theme. You can't afford to have any "small poems," fillers, throw-aways. You want the language to sing, to be both memorable and remarkable. The Talmud says, "God wants the heart," and that's also what I want to see in a collection, poems that aren't just cerebral, but ones that engage the heart as well. What I loved in House was its central metaphor, the way the poems flexed and explored the theme, which included physical houses, dream houses, Jungian archetype houses, houses of childhood, rented houses, a house turned into a restaurant, houses visited while traveling, famous houses (Frank Gehry's Dancing House in Prague). And then there were poems about the things that furnish a house: "Chairs," windows ("Opening Out"), attic staircases ("Passage"), pajamas, backyards with birds at the feeder and trees that "burn beautifully in their dying." [fill in the name of the author] writes, "I want to think that life can just spread out / sometimes, sleepy and shiny, voluptuous," and I do, too. Bravo!

-Barbara Crooker, author of Radiance, Line Dance, and More