While Listening to the Enigma Variations: New and Selected Poems

In this new and startling collection, Diane Frank’s poems transcend not just genres but entire dimensions. When she speaks to J.S. Bach, she really means it and when Bach speaks back, she listens - entirely - the way certain moths perceive sound via their whole body, even their wings. How is this accomplished? It will seem to come through the poems themselves - their music, tonal qualities and subjects, yet it goes even deeper as it pushes up like duende through the soles of your feet. The voice is declarative, emphatic, spirit driven. She will tell you, ‘When a buffalo enters your dream, / listen for arpeggio hooves, / the weight of music, / a copper moon / above a vanishing prairie’ and you will, you must listen.

Lois P. Jones, author of Night Ladder

Radio Host, KPFK’s Poets Cafe