Humanophone

“. . . these poems surprise, they are carefully crafted, intelligent first-person lyrics—the line-breaks alone are a lesson in poetic craft—but often untraditional, despite the appearance of some recognizable forms. . . . Having come to respect how words are made new in this book, I went back to my dictionary to find "ferment" is not only a cause of agitation or intense activity, but also a living organism. Humanophone has forever changed the word for me.” —Women’s Review of Books

“Holmes’... pursuit of new methodology invigorates and vibrates throughout the book.... Throughout Humanophone, Holmes continues to develop her always musical sense of the multiple voices within the writer, and proves herself to be, as Partch said of himself, ‘a profound traditionalist, but of an unusual sort.’” —Boston Review

"I was immediately taken by the true originality of conception, the inventive audacity, the subtlety of phrasing and vocabulary of Janet Holmes’s poems. Music in these pieces becomes a metaphor, a true metaphor that cannot be paraphrased but sends out its illuminating beams over the singularity of our lives, our life. The delicacy and subtlety of her work have grown with each reading." —W. S. Merwin

"Holmes makes moving and amusing poems . . . a most memorable concert." —Booklist

“These are not poems built to thunder-nor is the book itself constructed this way, but rather to create a space for us to hear those slight, nearly invisible sounds and moments that all but get lost-not a flute, but 'the echo of a flute,' that sound 'the unborn listen . . . to . . . conducted through bone, through fluid and dark' before, in the face of unfiltered reality, 'it's different now-harsher-—'” —Poetry International

"Humanophone creates an extended meditation on sound as it is shaped by a body, received by the human ear, and woven by the brain into musical compositions. . . .The musical subjects of Humanophone are not only well-researched and explored in varied forms and tones, but also woven beautifully into a brilliant and cohesive design. . . .With Humanophone, Janet Holmes enters and extends the dialogue on poetics in the twenty-first century." —Sandra Alcosser, author of Except by Nature and A Fish to Feed All Hunger

“The book is full of various delights.” —Beloit Poetry Journal, Fall 2002

“Witty, learned, bedazzling, bold: the poems of Janet Holmes’s new book veer before our eyes from clarity and good humor into aesthetic mystery and a darker irony. This poet is beautifully unpredictable as to subject and mode, the variety of her purposes winningly enlivening the forms they invent. For her, music is more than metaphor. It is the characteristic shape of her breath, a way of beholding. As Humanophone testifies, the idea of a human-voice instrument is enacted, again and again, in the notation and perfect pitch of these poems.” —James Applewhite

“...Holmes borrows her project from history, mining lives to find a single tone to convey the creative experience, its daily trials, its processes, its awe. Holmes masters the broad metaphor, sampling stories ranging from a man beating an octopus against a counter, to the reinvention of sounds by Raymond Scott.... The result is a book unified by a central conceit: how to catch life, with its beautiful, funny, and regrettable sounds, and replicate the experience for readers and listeners. Perhaps what is most intriguing about this collection is the sheer eclectic nature of its subjects and the varied mind that connects them. Sirenic.... Holmes parallels the protagonist of her poems, leaving readers with the certainty that this compulsion is toward something brave.” —ForeWord Magazine

“Holmes is a wonderful poet—one of the best of her generation now at work in America.” —John Matthias