Grit & Whimsy

Hussy. Harpy. Crone. Iphigenia, Queen Gluttony, and Mona Lisa. Voices that inhabit this collection sing with bold and compelling female force. These are Shakti poems, work that hums with the often angry, always outspoken mien of the Hindu goddess whose name means the power. With satire, with wit, with notable imagery and music, Karen Braucher Tobin gives us a Poemata Feminea powered by considerable candor and arresting inventiveness.

–Paulann Petersen, Oregon Poet Laureate Emerita

In Grit & Whimsy, some of Karen Braucher Tobin’s poems are unhappy denizens of the real world, the world of MBAs and plastic food trays, of trading briefcase and heels for diaper stench and baby upchuck. But then other poems majestically and joyfully take flight. A swan boat leaves its wake, Sylvia Plath doesn’t die, a doctor offers chirpy little pamphlets. It’s quite a ride and at each stop you’ll find revelation after revelation, the highest order of wit, and Horace’s Omnes una manet nox: the same night that awaits us all.

–John Surowiecki, author of Missing Persons and Flies