Vertigo
Reviews

Publishers Weekly (starred review):
“[Vertigo’s] short, stunning lyrics should solidify Ronk’s place as an original and important contemporary American voice.”

Rain Taxi:
“Invoking musical performance, theatrical staging, and characters . . . Ronk suggests some identifiable, possibly universal, narrative while effacing the boundaries between fiction and reality.”

Salem Press:
“Mysterious and haunting . . . the poems efface boundaries of perception and intuition, encouraging a permanent state of wonder and surprise.”

Nothing to Say and Saying It (Blog):
“Martha Ronk is one of our great poets.”

C.D. Wright, National Poetry Series judge:
“Martha Ronk’s Vertigo is as beckoning as it is unsettling.”

Donald Revell:
“Reading Vertigo, I find much, much more than the continuing project of one of America’s finest poets. Martha Ronk has always been a visionary of astonishing tact and of a subtle, undeniable authority. But in these new poems, she sets herself a shimmering task—nothing less than the rectification of Vision itself. She calls our attentions to Attention.”

Cole Swensen:
“[Ronk] keeps us poised on the verge between this world and another with poems anchored in generosity and compassion and driven by full emotions that don’t sacrifice intelligence.”