Amy Barone’s latest book, “We Became Summer,” is a wonderful collection of carefully crafted, perfectly executed poems. Each poem is a story, a memory she opens like a gift, and examines with a painter’s eye. This attention to detail fills her poetry. The following poem is an excellent example of the ease of language she uses to express a powerful thought.

Poetry On Demand

For her, poetry comes from "mining tales from the soul," from "Reliving death and resurrection," from "camouflaging mendacity," and, "unmasking loved ones." That's not an easy task.

Blank Page

Welts? Wounds that never heal? This is painful stuff she mines. Throughout her collection pain weaves in and out of her poetry, one tread among many. In her poem, "Healing Poetry," she writes of an experience at a poety reading, where,

I was uplifted by grace

that emerged and powerful poetry,
writing that clearly saved her life.

Clearly, Amy Barone believes in the healing power of poetry. Painful as it may to face a blank page, to "relive death and resurrection" Amy's poetry moves through a landscape of a time when:

Planning was for bores.
When we got too big for our bikes,
in our hiphuggers, midriff tops and sneakers,

we sought danger.
All we had to do was
wear a sultry scowl

and flash a thumb.
We trusted strangers to take us
anywhere we wanted to go.
                                            (From Power in a Thumb)

Do muses take vacations? Maybe, I know mine does. But reading through this collection of poems I can't help thinking that Amy's muse travels with her,

Whether home or in distant lands,
I feel you holding out a hand,
indicating where to stop next as I drift.
                                            (From Travels with You)

One of the main treads weaving through this collection is music. You see this in the cadence of her lines, and in the music she invokes. For someone who, started piano lessons at four, and was slapped when she hit the wrong key, Amy's love of music and musicians is profoundly in evidence. In using song titles in several of her poems she creates an interaction with the reader—the songs come out of her memories, but the songs call stir emotions in the reader as well. The songs of her mother still resonates and in her poem, "Soundtrack to My Mother's Life" she brings that music to us with skill and touching empathy.

Soundtrack to My Mother’s Life

And so with her father’s music:

Soundtrack to My Father’s Life

In these two poems we are given short strong portraits of Amy Barone's parents, pictures created by her use of song titles. She uses this technique in her poem, "Soundtrack to my life" (Page 21) and in this poem below.

Happy at Art

By incorporating the titles of Josh Ritter songs into the lines of her poem, Amy Barone shows her skill in avoiding the pitfalls of a list poem. Forget for a moment that these words are titles of songs, and look at how they interact and flow with the other words in the poem and drive the poem along.

We Became Summer takes place in that very real, very magical landscape where adolescence and early adulthood overlap. It is a time when everything is possible, a time: “before we needed protection,” “before self-awareness replaced laughter,” “before ennui replaced embracing fear of the unknown.”

We Became Summer

It is a wonderful collection. Get it. You will find yourself looking back over her book to find a certain poem, another, and still another. I know I did.