|
Of her first book, the poet Robin Becker says: "Gregorio's women give voice to our twin longings for individual identity and relationship. She articulates the tangle of our desires in bold and nuanced language."
And of her second book, John Nichols says: "It has a quiet yet passionate intensity, richly connected to earth and to the yearning and scary rhythms and rites of true loving. The intimacy is both gentle and unafraid...".
“She has a wonderful sense of tone and textue and a feeling for life that radiates from every line.” –Kell Robertson, The Santa Fe New Mexican
“In this scholarly arena of the feminine imagination she creates an urgent world of real existence, wrought with sounds and sights and secnts and with a million contradictory irregularities delineating her own aspects of consciousness. This is noir.” –Dusty Dog Reviews
“…she holds words in her mouth with an uncommon consciousness of their shapes and flavors.” –Elizabeth Cohen, The Santa Fe New Mexican
“Every so often we’re lucky enough to come across the work of a poet concerned not so much with making verbal constructs as with reaching through the words to touch us with a memory of ourselves, helping us remember not how smart we are, or aren’t, or how clever…but how human—reminding us, in short, how communication is a kind of communion…a welcoming back into the community of intelligent feeling…” –Michael Gregory, The Poet’s Voice Series, Bisbee
“What attracted me to it in the first place was the vitality of the words--how each word held in it the "wanting" that gives the tanka life and at the same time describes and holds within it the great teeming chaotic sea from which life springs. There is a verity of the words to the immediate experience of the poet, and further a verity of her experience with the primeval truth. I think it was the poet Charles Simic who referred to the philosopher 's stone as being the button on his wife's blouse. But even more compelling is the beauty of the language used to convey this truth with the salt and wind taste of flesh and blood.
This is the kind of writing that stirs me to want to write. This is the use of words that creates that hunger from which all things grow.” —Merrill Ann Gonzales, Tanka Society of America
Of the X Poems:
“Gregorio's strong, quiet voice and lithe rhythms fill this volume with womanly grace while they fill her words with intense, contained sensitivity. The poems, love-strong and vibrant, paint brisk images in the mind while slowly sucking tears from the soul. We enjoy them and they have their effect on us who taste the bitter within the tender, like the sharpness in the aftertaste of young fruit.” —From the article, “Local Poets, Local Presses”, by Anne MacNaughton. Originally Published in the Santa Fe Reporter, May 15-21, 1996 Edition.
Of Water Shed:
“…this new collection (which) showcases the poet's parallel practices of the martial art of Aikido and the writing of poetry. Gregorio states in her introduction that the two forms of art have often "jostled for attention," and that she has "finally arrived at a place of acceptance regarding the mat (Aikido) and the page (poetry)." Clearly, she belongs to both worlds. This is stunning work that is superbly grounded in deep and thoughtful awareness.
Tanka were often written as a kind of finale to every sort of occasion; there is a strong belief that no experience was quite complete until a tanka had been written about it. The spirit of Gregorio"s work here exemplifies that belief. This is poetry that is provocative and breathtaking and at the same time simple and straightforward. Sometimes simplicity is the best way to convey complex feelings and Gregorio does it with fever and skill.
Restraint is an admirable quality in poetry, and is usually reserved for those who have matured past the need to impress, which clearly, Gregorio has done: "after all of this / I make a pie and catch myself / using effort / as I sift the white flour / into the green bowl"
—Jeanie C. Williams, Southwest Book Views
Back to top
|