Jill Essbaum's poems in the book Heaven are deep and inciteful. They reveal various religious aspects of society and question the heart about what God is and means to us as individuals. Each poem is cleverly titled and offers us humor, sex, doubt, and most importantly faith in what we all know as Heaven. Jill Essbaum is an astonishing addition to the poetry community and it is my fervent prayer that her insightfulness and in touch attitude with Christian themes and emotions permantly make their mark in poetry books to come.

Jill Essbaum's book is amazing! ... The poems were beautiful and inspirational. How she is able to intertwine God, Death, Evil, and Sexuality is phenominal. Go out and buy this book.

Like repetitive brush strokes, the author's sparse prose circles round and round, to build up a vivid portrait of the life of an artist in Renaissance Italy. Alternating chapters describe the lives of three artists, two unknown and one the revered painter, Titian. It took me a while to get into the book. The writing style is vivid, but repetitive and distancing. I'd recommend this book for those with a more serious interest in the creative life of 16th century Italy.

If you are at all interested in art, or have any intrigue with Italy, you'll find this book completely captivating. This book weaves together the lives of Titian Vecellio, his family and servant; Bartolomeo de Bartolai, a shepherd, collector of broken glass and artist-by-night; and Martin de Martinelli, a frescoe craftsman who leaves his friend Bartolai behind in a remote village to pursue work and drink in Florence and Venice. The dangerous world in which the characters live instills in most a passionate commitment to religion as the plague and influenza are frequent visitors upon the characters and those they love. I found the most glorious part of the book at the end when Bartolai is inspired to express his own passionate artistic talent, talent tossed away by a few other characters in spite of their more worldly choices or oppportunities.

I found a parallel between the desperate expressions of religion by struggling 16th century Italians who dealt with famine, plague and poverty, and today's USA in which terrorist attacks have created an upsurge in attendance at churches. I find it fascinating that as humans we seek a higher power when the future feels outside of our control.

In The Day Laid on the Altar, a character discovers an exotic flower shaped like a turban. That flower could serve as a metaphor for the book, which, through chapters that focus on different but related characters, provides poignant and compelling portraits not only of the individual characters, but of the cultures they inhabit. The writing is spare and beautiful, comparable to Michael Ondaatje's or James Salter's, and many paragraphs contain embedded rhymes and rhythms that give the text the feel of poetry.

As Peter Lorre would have said, "you're choking." There's a lot to appreciate here: the poems are carefully made. One could wish for a little less prudishness, if that's the right word; there's a self-protective mechanism at work in the poetry that keeps meaning in one corner and language in another. Well, okay, but Bang can do better, and will, I am sure.

There isn't a single poem in this scrupulously crafted first book that won't fascinate and rejuvenate even the most jaded reader of poetry. Look forward to Apology for Want: you have been waiting for it. It will restore your faith in the ambitious American lyric.

This book reads like so many pictures sprinkled on the page in words. It is an entirely creative endeavor. m loncar even includes entirely blank pages to indicate a shift in scenes and exaggerate strange pauses. His poetry works like something very visual, and he is very aware of this-- when you read his poetry you aren't sure if you're reading words or watching films. What makes this book work is that it loosely traces a narrative throughout the pages but it creates this story in a very refreshing, creative manner.

66 galaxie is an amazing collection of work by a truly talented artist. It is a rich mixture of fiction, roadtrip, and poetry. The themes of the work are varied but fit well together: journey, landscape, automobiles, and more. To describe 66 galaxie as hip seems trite, but where else are you going to get references to mix-tapes and refrigerator-poet's by a poet who weaves his words so skillfully?

Haiku like in style and influenced by multi-media artforms, I recommend 66 galaxie to anyone that wants to indulge in contemporary poetry that is not afraid to experiment.

I received 66 Galaxie as a gift and I have since given it to several friends, all of whom (at least purportedly) love it. I will stay out of the debate as to whether it is experimental or not, but it is certainly provactive and entertaining.

My complaint about much post-modern and other contemporary poetry is that it seems like an inside joke. I am sure that it is terrific fun for those authors and their friends, but it can leave me cold (I am also willing to accept that perhaps I am just too dumb to understand). Mr. loncar, on the other hand, is able to experiment (oops, sorry, put another, noncontraversial word there) with his chosen art without making his work inaccessable. Heck, isn't the point of poetry or any art form to communicate your ideas in an interesting way? (But, the ideas do need to be communicated).

If only the author's musical works were available to the masses, he'd be able to truly show himself to be the Leonard Cohen of his generation (well no, I think he is better musically than Mr. Cohen).

In any case, I highly recommend this collection.