'‘Lyric poetry is the lightly orchestrated voice of true feeling. Its shape and its language persuade us, as readers, that soul or spirit has become fully incorporate. In Kristen Lang’s own words, again and again “we are all / this embrace”: all in her gathered moment of love or of loss. She has written of our inevitable transience, “the angels are not ourselves”, but these sure-footed poems locate personal apprehension in a physically delicate, common world. Readers will surely delight in the subtle, varied command of SkinNotes.’ Chris Wallace-Crabbe
'Kristen Lang is an unusual poet in that her first two full-length books have appeared in the same year. For an outsider it’s difficult to know what the relationship between them is: it could be that SkinNotes contains poems that are earlier than those of The Weight of Light or it might be that a large group of existing poems of varying ages was simply subdivided into two manuscripts, perhaps along generally thematic lines. Whatever the case there are powerful continuities between the books just as there are significant differences.' (Introduction)
'Kristen Lang’s deftly-crafted poetry collection, SkinNotes, scrawls its emotive verse across the skin of the self. It is not indelible ink and it would not matter if it were, as the body is transient just as the words we wield, weave, and write exist only for a brief time.' (Introduction)
'Kristen Lang’s deftly-crafted poetry collection, SkinNotes, scrawls its emotive verse across the skin of the self. It is not indelible ink and it would not matter if it were, as the body is transient just as the words we wield, weave, and write exist only for a brief time.' (Introduction)
'Kristen Lang is an unusual poet in that her first two full-length books have appeared in the same year. For an outsider it’s difficult to know what the relationship between them is: it could be that SkinNotes contains poems that are earlier than those of The Weight of Light or it might be that a large group of existing poems of varying ages was simply subdivided into two manuscripts, perhaps along generally thematic lines. Whatever the case there are powerful continuities between the books just as there are significant differences.' (Introduction)
