A Play of Mirrors Poetry Memoir by Ann Holmes

In her third collection, A Play of Mirrors. Ann Holmes keeps surprising us with her way of looking at things and we enjoy wondering where her poems will take us next. They bear a touch of the surreal, as in "Visitor," where "Jesus barges into a friend's shower stall" or in "Snowbirds," where "a red-tailed hawk dives out of an oversize/ page of my Audubon book." Her poems deftly avoid sentimentality. In "A Slice of Moonlight", we find her searching her "left forearm/ for the/indelible/ stain of/ invisible/ numbers" and in "On the Day," she matter-of-factly foresees the "day when today/will not become yesterday." Often, she plays with form on the page, as in "Wordless," in which the words themselves contradict the title as they swirl down the page as if carried on a breeze. A painter as well as a poet, Holmes' love of art, of shapes and words, shines through this collection as she explores the sounds and meaning of words. These are brief tight poems brimming with wry humor and a lively imagination. There is no end to what interests this poet.