Lapidary

These poems, voiced by stones, speaking for the poet and for humanity, are beautiful and peculiar. Weinraub cracks open craft to reveal humane interiors. Fixed forms with meter and rhyme, tenderly chiseled, deftly sculpted, pulse with regret, joy and a hundred other sentiments. Bright diction and an impressive control of syntax allows Weinraub to modulate tone and music. Wit and gorgeous capitulations abound in this book. "Gentlemen prefer blonde Crystals" gives way to "imperfections are a garden." These poems "forge a new world out of stone," a landscape populated by jade, garnet, and onyx with time-rich thoughts, blood-rich emotion. - EDUARDO C. CORRAL, author of Slow Lightning, winner of the Yale Younger Poets Prize, 2012; Lapidary is an original and brilliant collection of poems that offers insights into the various states of human nature through the voices of different stones. This book is a must have, and it will be avidly read for years to come. - EDWARD ODWITT, writer & illustrator; In Lapidary - stones, semi-precious, precious - stones talk to you, skillfully, convincingly and you believe them, you believe them! - THOMAS LUX, acclaimed poet and teacher, the Bourne chair in poetry at the Georgia Institute of Technology