You know you are in for a wonderful set of poems when the first poem causes your heart to skip a beat and then you look again at the cover illustration and it's the visual translation of that poem. Now you know what a splint to keep the heart still looks like. The poems in Amanda Lamarche's first book illustrate one of J. Michael Yates' aphorisms: "Art must summon a weather of danger."; There are no clichés in The Clichéist. Anyone planning to fell a tree, please first read the fifteen-poem section, A Tree Falls In The Woods. "Here's my trick for staying alive. Don't think like a man when you plan your escape route. Think like what lives in the forest. Sniff things out. Make friends with the idea of a getaway on all fours."; 0-88971-20-5

--review by Hannah Main-Van Der Kamp

[BCBW 2006] "Poetry"