You get the impression, on first reading these poems, that Michael Estabrook is a novelist--not long ago, in a letter, Estabrook told me he'd tried to write a novel, but he wasn't entirely satisfied with the result. So, I imagine, he let the poetry take over. STRIPPED & SHIVERING consists of 19 short poems, each poem a personality sketch. Estabrook's lines are sharp, his words well chosen. Too many poets make us plow through line after line, serving up too much verbiage in the fat. Estabrook's poems are small, one-takes, well-crafted arrows. They instruct, without didacticism, about the hard knocks of life.--Kurt Nimmo
This review originally appeared in TapRoot Reviews #5,
Contact the editor, luigi-bob drake, at Burning Press
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