Four accomplished poets, with four distinct voices, come together to create The Fifth Voice.

REVIEWERS' COMMENTS
This fine volume reminds us why Toadlily Press is a necessary presence in contemporary poetry. Four distinctive, memorable poets: Givotovsky reveals, “your body has rebuilt itself, cell/by cell, into a new animal.” Hart marvels and laments, “how fast the mind/takes hold of looking.” Kucij intones, “In the woods you burn whatever drops.” The Fifth Voice might be described by Strous' farm couple resting at twilight, “all the work, all the intelligence of the work/changed to this dark light gleaming.”

—Suzanne Cleary

These writers have jimmied their way into “meaning through a back door” by crafting a sleight-of-hand nonchalance. As if playing chicken with the mundane, they have nosed into the diaries of strangers and loved ones and found themselves at a two-way mirror, a crossroads of “shift and seep.” A combination of third-person nerve and first-person wit, the collection invites us to contemplate “treading water under the waves.”

—Ed Pavlic

A festival of different lyric voices under the same covers. Here, in Toadily Press' second collection, you will find four chapbooks of lyrical power that is both revealing and perceptive.

—Ilya Kaminsky

MEET THE THE FIFTH VOICE AUTHORS
Victoria Givotovsky began to write poetry only after turning fifty. In fifteen years, nearly sixty of her poems have been published in journals including Arts & Letters, Birmingham Poetry Review, Nimrod, Off the Coast, Rattle, Runes, The Bitter Oleander, The Comstock Review, and WaterStone. Elegies and Other Love Songs is her first chapbook. She lives with her husband of forty-four years in Litchfield County, CT. Read Victoria Givotovsky's poetry.

Pamela Hart, a former journalist, is a poet and teaching artist. She leads workshops at the Katonah Museum of Art and collaborates in its visual literacy program. Recently, she has taught writing at Long Island University Graduate School of Education and was artist-in-residence at the Pierre van Cortland School in Westchester . Hart received an MFA in poetry from Sarah Lawrence College. She lives in South Salem, New York. Read Pamela Hart's poetry.

Noah Kucij is from upstate New York but is currently teaching English to Japanese students in a small town on Kyushu, Japan. He has also taught English in American high schools and at Skidmore College. Noah's poems have appeared in journals such as The Cortland Review and LOST Magazine. On Wednesday nights, he plays for the Tagawa Basket Ball Club. Read Noah Kucij 's poetry.

Allen Strous lives in Circleville, Ohio, a part of rural Ohio where his family has lived for several generations. His poems have appeared in The Ohio Review (including a chapbook, Spaces ), Blue Unicorn, Phantasmagoria, and other journals. He has been the recipient of an Individual Fellowship from the Ohio Arts Council and was a semifinalist for the 2005 Nimrod/Hardman Awards. He works for the U.S. Postal Service. Read Allen Strous's poetry.

For review copies and/or to schedule readings, contact [email protected].

back to top