“Like a modern-day Whitman the poet loiters at her ease, in her case among the crowds of Grand Central Station ‘a little ecstatic from looking up at the constellations/in the green and gold ceiling.’ Listening to the skinny violinist play Paganini’ she stands still letting the music touch her and feels ‘the whole station inside’ her awareness. Thus it is also a book of enormous calm; indeed, I cannot think of another collection of contemporary poetry more conscious of our need for the violence of continual change and more at peace in the center of that violence.”
—Philip Levine

 

“Malena Morling’s passion is for observing. She sees everything—victims, suicides, lost mothers, compulsive counters, blind women in buses—with a penetrating eye. She is deeply aware of the moment of ‘passing through’ and it informs her poetry. Ocean Avenue is subtle, lovely, and original.”
—Gerald Stern

 

“Every time I have reread Astoria, I feel I am experiencing the poems for almost the first time. The poems are constant enthusiasms, at work with intuitions from the heart and the mind and the world.”
—Michael Burkard