Title: APPLE PERFUME
Author: Rosanne Wasserman
Publisher: The Groundwater Press, New York
Intuflo editions

The poems in Apple Perfume range from abstract and fantastic, as in "Sweeter than Wine," to love poems and cityscapes. There are poems with Marianne Moore stanzas and sonnets, in Kalevala lines and in prose. In "Spring Scene," she paints a Lower East Side courtyard with elegance and a little magic: a cat seems to walk through walls, strange birds hint at another dimension, and a tree-bound clock echoes time's erasure back though the poem. "Nothing Will Happen" is a very large confrontation in a very small space. Death stands beyond anyone's ability to change or do anything, and the poem resorts to acrobatic movement. She creates the emotions of helplessness and love within eight lines, with perfection.

I think in their mid-thirties, poets gain depth, maturity, or a wider sense of beauty. Also, and accruing of a larger sense of love comes to you as you grow and enters your writing. Rosanne Wasserman is at the threshold of that mature work, writing with breadth, depth, and largesse of mind and feeling.

Ruth Stone