The Hills of Holland: Poems

Esther Schor's poems live where the poet who must choose—rhyme and rhythm; the wayward fortunes of travel, art and myth—meets the given of everyday life: children and comets, punchlines and snow. In her formal sequence, "Cumbria," the enduring ruins and rocks of the Lake District tell us our own frailty; they speak of "Death/ how it comes and goes, how a cry/ becomes speech, turns to a whisper." In the title poem, two narrators take us to Sumatra in the late 18th century. The Hills of Holland is a truly ambitious work by an extremely talented writer.