Undress, She Said Paperback – September 15, 2022

This reviewer heard Doug Anderson read from Undress, She Said, and it was bull’s eye after bull’s eye. There is sexual passion in the book, but it’s so human and honest it seems clean, an integral part of a life from which Anderson didn’t hide. Later I found the poem where the “she” in the title tells the narrator to undress. The ‘she” is death.At the reading referred to above, Anderson overshot the time limit. Usually when poets do that, the audience snores. But this time they got even more awake because everything the poems said was needed.Later, with eyes on the page, reading the book, I could see how clean, direct and well put together the poems were. Anderson knows many of the living U.S. poets I find most exciting to read, and can seriously talk with them on an equal footing. That’s not surprising if one looks at these poems.

Doug Anderson's most recent book of poetry has that depth of craft and insight that only a poet of experience both in writing and in life can offer. A wide range of subjects reflects an ever inventive, restless mind, from memories of past love affairs and his military service in Vietnam to grooming horses and photographing old barns in New Hampshire. There are many stunning passages such as this one describing the impact of looking into a horse's face - "the soft eye big enough to free fall into on the way to the gods" - or this one in homage to the ancient Chinese poet Po-Chui - "Death is finally kind. There is / nothing to fear, says the snow." His poetry fully merits his own description of what poems should be: "Poems are like the oil pressed from olives, fragrant and clear. / I hope to leave my spoonful of gold." And he has left a bucket of them for us to dip into time and again. A wonderfully wild and wise poet!

Superb writing, human language, powerful imagery, we all own a piece of the conflict. Anderson’s fearlessness of words and living creates poetry that takes us there.

Once again, Doug Anderson does not disappoint. Written in four sections, the undercurrent of this collection is death, as a beloved, as war, as a reconciliation with life's disappointments and brief ecstasies. "I want to walk/by the sea/in a gown so thin/the wind desires me." There is so much of life in this collection. Give it to someone you love.