We call on publishers to remember the beautiful books of one of our most essential poets, modern master Melissa Green, and restore them to the nation's bookshelves. Her books, The Squanicook Eclogues (1987), Color is the Suffering of Light (1995), and Fifty-two (2007), are precious to us and, we believe, vital to American literature. This tribute by some of our most distinguished poets dramatizes the centrality of her achievement to our culture: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-my4sJ_cFEw.
Please bring this precious part of our heritage out of the shadows.
"Here, by the grace and wisdom of the language in which rhyme rhymes with time, comes the poet who commits everything she touches to your memory ... In [her] eclogues, the New England flora seems to have finally acquired the power of speech."
- Joseph Brodsky
"Responsibility and delight are the tone of the true poet, a joy in the craft that supercedes its themes, however afflicted, and on every page of this book Melissa Green's reverential elations uplift and soothe the reader as naturally and cleanly as the morning wind."
- Derek Walcott
