R. T. Smith
"The poems of Impossible Bottle reveal that Claudia Emerson felt the shadow of mortality upon her but refused to flinch and devoted herself to shining a light through that shadow. In her observations and meditations, Emerson found a new radiance as she beheld a wide range of subjects, many relating to questions of dying, 'the familiar art of sorrow,' all pulsing with her love of life and words. This new volume gives us some of the most deft, intimate, passionately understated and generous poems in the language. The range of her compassion is astonishing, the precision of her verse heartbreaking, as she navigates the undiscovered country. These brave and brilliant poems will long inspire us as "the body of light that hangs from the rafters," for Emerson is a poet of the truest measure." -- R. T. Smith, author of In the Night Orchard
short version, if needed:
"Impossible Bottle gives us some of the most deft, intimate, passionately understated and generous poems in the language. The range of Claudia Emerson's compassion is astonishing, the precision of her verse heartbreaking, as she navigates the undiscovered country. These brave and brilliant poems will long inspire readers as 'the body of light that hangs from the rafters,' for Emerson is a poet of the truest measure." -- R. T. Smith, author of In the Night Orchard
Alice Friman
"Delicately subtle, but always steel-eyed and honest, the poems in Claudia Emerson's posthumous collection, Impossible Bottle, serve as witness to the cliff's edge where she must have been living to write them. The edge where opposites bleed into each other, where 'sorrow is ecstatic' and where the dying might feel 'a lightening, the way a snake must / on slipping through its discarded // mouth into another year, or, knowing nothing / of a year, into time itself.' These are translucent poems, transcendent and shattering." -- Alice Friman, author of The View from Saturn