Shy Green Fields

Hugh Behm-Steinberg's Shy Green Fields is in company with books by poets who wrote about glorious ordinary days in extraordinary times. In a pillowbook of a hundred seven-line poems, this life, as it is written, has the shadow of Robert Creeley's A Day Book behind it, and the shadow of Federico Lorca in his famous, reiterated line, "Green, I love you, green, ..." a specific, and pacific, emotional response in difficult political times. Behm-Steinberg's book is, likewise, carnal, primal, and intellectual. Shy Green Fields exults in experience, "Such versions!"

--Jane Miller