In my efforts to keep my finger on the pulse of Fire in the Pasture, I came across two Goodreads reviews of the anthology, one by Laura Craner, the other by Dayna Patterson. Laura blogs for A Motley Vision: Mormon Literature and Culture and Dayna Patterson is a poet and the editor of Psaltery & Lyre, an online poetry mag. Both reviews are short—Laura’s comes in at 109 words, Dayna’s at 100—and I found their brevity refreshing. That and they both speak very highly of Fire, so why wouldn’t I share them?
Anyway: here they are (I’ve also added them to the anthology page):
Laura says (December 29, 2011):
Okay, so this is a little bit misleading because I haven’t read the entire tome of poems yet. I’m a cherry picker when it comes to poetry–rifling through the pages reading what catches my eye or jives with my current mood. (Reading a poetry book straight through, cover to cover just seems wrong. Like nails-on-a-chalkboard wrong.) But I own this one and I love it! Chadwick did an amazing job editing this work. There is such a breadth of work and so many poets to explore, this is one I’ll keep returning to. This book is well worth the money–I promise it’s bigger than you think it will be!
Dayna says (October 15, 2012):
I got this book for Christmas last year and eagerly dove into it. I’ve read a few poems a day since then, savoring each one. Normally, I am quite intimidated by large anthologies of poetry, preferring instead the slim individual collections I can read in under a week. But I knew this anthology would be worth the sustained effort, and it was. SO many excellent poets, so many different ideas and images. Reading this book was a thoroughly enjoyable experience. I think I have dogeared more pages than I haven’t. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in contemporary poetry.
You can see Fire‘s Goodreads page here.