The Stars of Earth - new and selected poems

Emily Grosholz is a poet of radiant intelligence, patient lyricism, and meticulous craft. She has a gifted naturalist’s regard for the living world and wherever she looks that world, for its part, offers her its poetry. With a philosopher’s wit and a mathematician’s eye for beauty, she can link geometry and physics to the apricot color of a robin’s breast. She also writes with great empathy for her subjects. Hers are some of the best poems about parenthood and friendship that we have. The Stars of Earth collects four decades of her elegant and excellent work. We are lucky to have it.
— Mark Jarman, author of The Heronry

I admire Emily Grosholz because of the sounds her poems make. She is always experimenting, even when the results seem effortless. She understands diction, syntactical proportion, when to write plain, when to extend the measure. The cunning irregularities are what most compel: the reader is never allowed to relax. Each poem, even those without a dedication, appears to be addressed to a singular reader and has a specific occasion. The general readers among us are admitted courteously to the civilizing company. The heart, not as a hackneyed valentine but as a living muscle, is always present as pulse and passion. The overwhelming sense these poems give is of affirmation.
— Michael Schmidt, author of New and Collected Poems