Review by Mary Barnet
Janet I. Buck is a poet of sorrow, a poet of pain, and a poet of loss.
But her wry sense, the twists of her lines, and the stark beauty of her
imagery always shine through the sorrow, the pain, and the loss. Her poetry
was Featured in the January 2000 Edition of PoetryMagazine.com.
Winner of the 2002 Gival Press Poetry Prize and a six-time Pushcart
Nominee, Tickets to a Closing Play is her second print
collection.
Sometimes it is difficult to finish reading a particularly pain-evoking
poem, and yet we return to complete our reading of it. We cannot stop
reading, just as we cannot avoid the sorrows of our lives: old age, war,
homelessness, and death. For often, this is the stuff of life.
John Amen, author of Christening the Dancer, says of her: "Janet
Buck is one of the best among us."
Susan Terris, Featured in the July August 01 Edition of
PoetryMagazine.com and author of Fire Is Favorable to the Dreamer
says, "This is a book to savor."
Jane Butkin Roth, editor of We Used to be Wives: Divorce Unveiled
Through Poetry, refers to this book: Tickets to a Closing Play as
the "same play closing soon" in which "we all have front row seats [, and
an] especially timely and timeless—even necessary collection."
She was one of ten poets to be featured at the One Heart, One World
Exhibit at the United Nations Exhibit Hall in New York City in April, 2000.
Her poem Acrylic Thighs was translated into five languages and paired
with original artwork. The tour traveled to France, Australia, Vietnam and
Japan.
Tickets to a Closing Play won the Gival Press Fourth Annual Poetry
Contest – 2002 and it was recently nominated for the 2004 Kate Tufts
Discovery Award. In addition to her Feature, Janet I. Buck’s poetry is in
many an edition of PoetryMagzine.com.