Review by Andrena Zawinski of BLUE WINDOW by Ann Fisher-Wirth, Spring 2004

Poetry Magazine

Books-in-Brief

Ann Fisher-Wirth--
BLUE WINDOW, 
Archer Books,
107 pages, ISBN 1931122-15-6, $14.00.

Review by Andrena Zawinski

Praise comes from all directions for this collection: Robert Hass 
calls Ann Fisher-Wirth "a realist and a modernist" and describes BLUE 
WINDOW as a book written with "steel and nerve," while Barbara Ras 
sees the work with a mission "to illuminate, animate, and redeem all 
that it touches," in which "darkness becomes more bearable."  And the 
poetry does and is all these things, indeed. The book, divided into 
five parts, starts with the title piece that sets us down in a 
Berkeley girlhood in the sixties, carries us through a frank and 
sexual coming-of-age in teenage years, delivers us into a young 
motherhood full of daughters and music and art and accompanying joys 
and losses. All this in the splendid dance of poetry Fisher-Wirth 
choreographs, one perfect step after the other, flying with each turn 
of page after page past a troupe of characters from Pennsylvania, 
Mississippi, California, Kyoto, places of the poet's life and 
imagination. As the last parts of the book draw to a close, 
Fisher-Wirth issues a final invitation: "You roll your burdensome 
days to the top of the mountain,/ then walk home through the crowded 
city streets/ full of the ache you know,/...Come to my table and 
drink my wine./ Then I will cook for you..."