Red Signature: Poems

Praise for Red Signature: Poems

“Mary Leader's book Red Signature is an astonishing gift. In it she cherishes, presents, gives back to everyone the brilliant common life that almost nobody but Mary Leader can see and make known. The poems are elegant, utterly without concealment and pride, open without hesitation or qualification to the great world. To read her book is to recover some part of the lost treasure of experience.” —Allen Grossman

“The cadences and silences of Red Signature are the work of a remarkably exacting listener. With its accomplished music, its generosity of feeling, and its witty, insightful love of the things of this world, Mary Leader's first book will delight and instruct any reader.” —Susan Stewart

“The best poems in this book are like looking at a great John Ford film: something elemental within American experience, something born in deprivation but capable of possessing grandeur, has found classic expression. See (perhaps best of all) 'Among Things Held at Arm's Length.' Mary Leader's book beautifully and eloquently recovers a world in the act of discovering her distance from it.” —Frank Bidart