The Actual World

The gifted author of Sure Shot (about which The Harvard Review wrote, "Erica Funkhouser has written an important book and is on her way to becoming an important poet") has now composed her third volume, including lyrics that conjure up a sisterly view of childhood, a narrative poem that brings to life a city under siege in civil war, and a group of poignant shorter poems dramatizing love, pain, and history. Much anthologized, Erica Funkhouser's dramatic poems are models of their kind: "Funkhouser breathes new life into the legends of Sacagawea, Louisa May Alcott, and Annie Oakley . . . but her most moving poems are those in her own voice" (Library Journal). To get the shape right one must be capricious as a twig - crave sunlight and audience and leave things open to the rain - respecting, at the same time, the solemnity of the whole tree. Certain irrevocable decisions must be lived with. - From "Pruning"