Wait for the Green Fire: Poems [signed] [first edition]

With Wait For the Green Fire, Dale Matthews speaks to us in poems almost warm to the touch, they are so human, so intelligent, and so deft. Matthews' poetry fascinates because of the alarming wisdom of its observations. The clear-eyed poet is unafraid to look all relationships in the face, whether she comes eye to eye with a lobster or with a loved one. Perhaps because Matthews is as alert to her own frailties as she is to others', she wears the mantle of her inheritance from Thomas Hardy and Louise Bogan lightly enough to write poems that both bite and shine with her own capacious understanding. Her craft serves as an ample house, welcoming home each subject from its odyssey. That green fire the poet waits for lies in her poems themselves. (Molly Peacock, author of The Second Blush and Cornucopia: New and Selected Poems) _______________________________________________________________ Dale Matthews has the great gift of being able to transform the simplest moments of life with keen observation, sensitive imagination, thoughtful meditation, seamless craft, and deep feeling into a poetry of genuine significance. Wait for the Green Fire will appeal to any reader who is looking for poems of clear surface and great depth, poems that will satisfy both the mind and the heart. (R. H. W. Dillard)