Bonanza, Winner of the 1996 Slapering Hol Press Chapbook Competition

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Bonanza is a collection of poems which lives up to its title — a rich vein mined by an observer-poet as intelligent as she is watchful. Forming an explicit narrative, the poems offer richly textured observations, canny uses of the free verse line, and a clear poetic voice traveling through time, geography, and the families we choose as well as those we inherit. Here struggle is as commonly found in the family as in far-flung battlefields: dads have tantrums, children growl choppy ammo sounds. Here disguises, gender roles and identifications, shifting victims and sacrifices are all motifs in the complex mix of what erodes, what stays. These poems stay. 

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—Carole Simmons Oles, contest judge and author of A Selected History of her Heart: Poems 

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Margo Taft Stever and Stephanie Strickland, Series Editors, Slapering Hol Press at the Hudson Valley Writers Center

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