"With this book . she takes her place as a notable poet on the American scene."? The Boston Globe "She celebrates rich emotion yielding the most meaningful love?the verse itself has a deceptive simplicity, hiding allusiveness behind a straightforward style and unaffectedly uniting rhythm and subject matter."? The Saturday Review "Her control of craft, her fine wit and intuition create poems which are breathtaking."?William Packard "A work of beauty and force . a major achievement."? Booklist "It's simplicity and directness; its concrete evocation of time and place is just as vivid as can be. It's a beauty.
"?David Ignatow "It has a sweeping and dramatic concision. I accept Tamsen fully and believe in her boggling trip to that pass in California. Maybe she has finally been made into American history."?Edwin Honig "Ruth has accomplished a kind of alchemy in distilling the inwardness of Tamsen's life. I think it's true to say that few people have been so remarkably lost and so remarkably found as Tamsen Donner."?Ric Burns, director of The Donner Party , PBS "Ruth Whitman has recreated the journal that Tamsen Donner lost on her nightmarish journey to California in 1846. The journal, transforming historical fact into poetic insight, is a testimony to optimism, dogged survival, integrity, and courage of a woman pioneer."? The Boston Globe "For those who love Hanna Senesh, Ruth Whitman's biography, written in the form of a diary, will be a new source of inspiration.
"?Isaac Bashevis Singer "Whether she is probing the lyric mysteries of flesh and its bondings, or exploring her Jewish heritage, or celebrating?in an unprecedented series of long narrative poems?the witness-lives of heroic women, Ruth Whitman's work of almost thirty years exemplifies in all its phases her lively intelligence and the honesty and bravery of her spirit."?Stanley Kunitz "Ruth Whitman joins the ranks of women writers exploring the deep past, where myth and history, sexuality and politics meet. This is a visionary book."?Alicia Ostriker "With wrenching power, Whitman revives Hatshepsut against the backdrop of her culture and time. Arias, recitatives, and interludes form the dialogue between Hatshepsut and the poet Ruth, mutually confiding their lives?the women and men they loved, their work, their children. Whatever else this richly layered book is about, it is also about time: the poet 'racing to leave behind / a few words arranged in a pattern / that will touch the living.' These Ruth/Hatshepsut poems do, and will."?Carole Simmons Oles "Ruth Whitman is one of America's best poets, and Hatshepsut, Speak to Me is one of her best books.
The writing is both comely and powerful. What an inspired idea: to resurrect Queen Hatshepsut of Egypt as a woman for moderns. Cleopatra, move over; you've been trumped."?Peter Viereck "An altogether fascinating presentation of a fascinating major but little-known figure. By exploring Hatshepsut's life and her own, one reflecting on the other, Ms. Whitman brilliantly illuminates both."?Theodore Weiss "The woman who shines out of these poems is large-hearted and full of feeling. The new poems are stunning.
Her fourteen-part elegiac sequence, 'The Drowned Mountain,' swept me away."?Maxine Kumin " Becoming a Poet is an exciting, instructive, readable guide to the poetic process, from its inception to the finished poem."? The Writer.