Madly in Love. Poems by Aliki Barnstone. Published by Carnegie Mellon University Press in 1997.
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"Late one summer night he tore through / her latched screen door, his trousers / in his hand, and declared his love." So begins the title poem, which leads off a charmed yet haunting collection that tracks and explores the weather patterns of longing, depression and despair. The "he" in the above quote is a librarian - perhaps the ultimate personification of quiet desperation - and his madness is par for Barnstone's passionate summers of "tornadoes, rivers flooding their banks, // agitated dreams, desire." In winter, however, yearnings are safely packed in ice; complacency and melancholia are the snowfall, and the only visitors to the poet's bed are the ghosts of a suicide uncle and grandfather. Spring arrives with insistence, "irises poke green / butterknives through dark dirt," and Barnstone takes to the water - a shower, a bath, a swim in the river - to soothe her body, with hop that love and sex will converge and her heart will rise. Scattered throughout these 29 poems are phrases borrowed from Emily Dickinson. Indeed, Dickinson's influence is apparent in Barnstone's deceptively simple lines, a matter-of-factness that seems to come straight from her bloodstream and a hushed urgency that is deafening.
---Publisher's Weekly

"There's a profound meditation in Madly in Love, a whirlwind of snow and warmth, a persistent music that informs a retrained rage, and it is such contrasts that propel the sweep and swell of this book. Each poem is a honed, crafted collection of moments and pulsebeats in a landscape where celebrations and confrontation are necessary: 'bright snow' and 'smart misery' are witnessed by the same merciful eyes."
---Yusef Komunyakaa

"For Aliki Barnstone, poetry seems a natural medium. The vision and cadences of these poems suggests a sensibility for which poetry is as inevitable and necessary as breathing or eating. It is no surprise to read, at the conclusion of one poem (and a poem largely about despair!): 'I can spit out hatred for the prescribers / as surely as I've been cooking up / this poem for a long time and today / I sit at my feast and enjoy every bite." Pleasure, wonder, anger, and moral passion are here, and the imagination that can write a poem called 'Love Poem' and make it fresh. This is a remarkable first book."
---Robert Pinsky

"All of a sudden I understand why I like Aliki Barnstone's poems so much. They remind me of the one she has studied most--shall we call her master--that Emily Dickinson. Not in the forms, not, as such, in the music, and not in the references; but in that weird intimacy, that eerie closeness, that absolute confession of soul. Once you understand this, you begin to see the connection. It piles up after that. In Barnstone, (too) the two worlds are intensely present, and the voice moves back and forth between them. She has the rare art of distance and closeness. It gives her her fine music, her wisdom, her form. She is a fine poet."
---Gerald Stern

"Madly in Love is beautiful poetry. These poems are freighted with longing and doubt but they are never naive. Passionate, unflinching family stories and personal loss are here and yet the will to love breaks all molds. In Aliki Barnstone's inimitable way, these poems rise spacious as a clearing sky. Deep breaths of how it is."
---Ruth Stone