Swimming the Hellespont - Selected Poems: 1971-2001

"All good things take time," says a fictionalized Pablo Neruda in the poem that opens this book, which itself took many years to write. Full of energy, passion, and telling detail, Swimming the Hellespont is peopled with memorable characters. Using a variety of forms, ranging from prose poems reminiscent of Gertrude Stein to sonnets and imitation Sapphic stanzas, Diamond creates a haunting record of one woman's journey through three politically-charged and life-changing decades. -Martha Collins