"... these poems stubbornly refused to be dropped, kept swimming back into my hands. And with each reading there was fresh pleasure and growing recognition, and the making, on paper, of a subtle, witty, sympathetic new friend."
Kate Kellaway, The Observer
"Lyric compression and a wonderful command of the plain style make Andrea Cohen one of a handful of poets who can make her voice the conscious echo of her mind. And it's a mind well furnished with whimsy, heartbreak, and moral questioning, a mind brilliantly attuned to the tragicomic, Kafkaesque nature of the day to day. But unlike Kafka, these poems don't end in conundrum, paradox, and irresolution - they also partake of the comprehensive affections of a writer like Chekhov, as unsparing as they are forgiving, resolute that their ironies not stop at irony but give a full account of our need for love, sex, personal identity, and spiritual understanding."
Tom Sleigh
"The things of this world are in these poems -- children, birds, fish, an ant caught in a sugar bowl, two lovers listening for and not hearing the cry or howl of a grey fox whose suffering they'd witnessed earlier, she herself seen in a shape-shifting fun house mirror, a wedding dress of peacock feathers, lit by a mangled paper lantern. It's the unblameable beauty and variety, of creatures, children, trees, artifacts, bounty that's always seen and heard in the condition of what you might call their joyful vulnerability. The book is bountiful too in the variety and skill of its versification. There are many different and pleasurable kinds of music in these poems."
David Ferry
"'I have been searching / for a mineral / that drowns want'. Maybe I like these poems as much as I do because I've been searching for the same mineral (no luck), or because they're smart and varied in subject and style, or because I feel, in each one, a powerful mixture of curiosity and invention. By the end of the book, I want no end to the book, and there it is again, desire and what to do with it in a world Andrea Cohen has made me see differently."
Bob Hicok
Andrea Cohen is an award-winning poet and short story writer whose work has been published in the pages of The Atlantic Monthly, The Threepenny Review, Glimmertrain, The Iowa Review, Memorious, and elsewhere. An accomplished professional and an experienced academic, she directs the Blacksmith House Reading Series and writes on the subject of marine research at MIT. Long Division is her latest collection of free verse and is an ideal and recommended introduction for those new to her poetic style, and a welcome update for those previously familiar with her work in her Owl Creek Poetry Prize winning anthology The Cartographer's Vacation.
Kate Kellaway, The Observer
"Lyric compression and a wonderful command of the plain style make Andrea Cohen one of a handful of poets who can make her voice the conscious echo of her mind. And it's a mind well furnished with whimsy, heartbreak, and moral questioning, a mind brilliantly attuned to the tragicomic, Kafkaesque nature of the day to day. But unlike Kafka, these poems don't end in conundrum, paradox, and irresolution - they also partake of the comprehensive affections of a writer like Chekhov, as unsparing as they are forgiving, resolute that their ironies not stop at irony but give a full account of our need for love, sex, personal identity, and spiritual understanding."
Tom Sleigh
"The things of this world are in these poems -- children, birds, fish, an ant caught in a sugar bowl, two lovers listening for and not hearing the cry or howl of a grey fox whose suffering they'd witnessed earlier, she herself seen in a shape-shifting fun house mirror, a wedding dress of peacock feathers, lit by a mangled paper lantern. It's the unblameable beauty and variety, of creatures, children, trees, artifacts, bounty that's always seen and heard in the condition of what you might call their joyful vulnerability. The book is bountiful too in the variety and skill of its versification. There are many different and pleasurable kinds of music in these poems."
David Ferry
"'I have been searching / for a mineral / that drowns want'. Maybe I like these poems as much as I do because I've been searching for the same mineral (no luck), or because they're smart and varied in subject and style, or because I feel, in each one, a powerful mixture of curiosity and invention. By the end of the book, I want no end to the book, and there it is again, desire and what to do with it in a world Andrea Cohen has made me see differently."
Bob Hicok
Andrea Cohen is an award-winning poet and short story writer whose work has been published in the pages of The Atlantic Monthly, The Threepenny Review, Glimmertrain, The Iowa Review, Memorious, and elsewhere. An accomplished professional and an experienced academic, she directs the Blacksmith House Reading Series and writes on the subject of marine research at MIT. Long Division is her latest collection of free verse and is an ideal and recommended introduction for those new to her poetic style, and a welcome update for those previously familiar with her work in her Owl Creek Poetry Prize winning anthology The Cartographer's Vacation.