 THE GEOGRAPHER'S WIFE (2011)
“The way magnetism draws the needle of a compass, yearning pulls the poems in this collection through the cardinal directions of a world in which time is not linear but circular, cyclical. Hunger draws lost loved ones to the table, calls lovers away from home and onto the open road. A peculiarly American manifest destiny directs Colonel Sanders to proselytize chicken trinity to the streets, while Raggedy Ann rips her stockings and aches for danger. Quirky characters, popular culture, and memory align here in a topography at once hilarious and haunting. Bart Edelman’s The Geographer’s Wife orients the reader in the body as a map of desire, where the individual life becomes a locus of its own, a point from which the world demarcates itself.”—Amy Sage Webb, editor, Flint Hills Review
“Bart Edelman’s sixth book, The Geographer’s Wife, is chock-full of stunning, stand-out poems. In ‘Holiday,’ the poet explores the soulful textures of loss present in the first Mother’s Day after his mother has passed. In another, the poet compares modern dating to ‘The New Math,’ a system that has changed so profoundly as to make the addition of romance nearly impossible. In this collection, Bart Edelman is single-minded in his purpose. He takes in the popular language of America—East, North, South, and West—and creates buoyant melodies of ‘coolness,’ a popular verbal chill that also diagnoses our deepest troubles—contemporary isolation and a profound longing for love.”—Todd James Pierce, author of Newsworld, winner ofthe Drue Heinz Literary Prize
“Bart Edelman understands how words should taste, how sounds strung with precision can create a universe of meaning far beyond denotation. These poems are etched into mirrors—transparent, but with surprises built to stand up through reading after reading. You will see your reflection smiling back in recognition on every page. With a cast of characters ranging from acrobats on speed to lumberjacks with wings, The Geographer’s Wife is an accomplished collection.”—Tom Chandler, Poet Laureate of Rhode Island emeritus
“I fell in love on first reading The Geographer’s Wife. It promises and delivers—such riches to follow. Then I met Uncle Irv from ‘The Contiguous 48’ and was taken, forever. In this wonderful and wide-ranging collection of poems, Bart Edelman charts the elusive latitudes and longitudes of desire. With antic humor and often rueful insight, he takes the reader on an emotional journey through time and space. So leave your suitcase and your fears behind, pick up your compass and open the door. Adventure awaits!”—Elizabeth Forsythe Hailey, author of A Woman of Independent Means
"Your poetry reminds me that the heart is often pulled in every direction, and oftentimes, simultaneously.
And as I read on, the film title Map of the Human Heart, throbbed in my head like a heartbeat. (Click here to read the full review.)
Jenni Nance, Sweet, Issue 4.3, May 2012
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 THE LAST MOJITO (2005)
"Bart Edelman's The Last Mojito weaves passionate poetic portraits into a cohesive, enthralling collection. These poems represent an astonishing range of vision and connect to the tradition of American literature as they artfully remind us of Edwin Arlington Robinson's sonnets and Sherwood Anderson's 'The Book of the Grotesque.'”—Ryan G. Van Cleave, editor, Contemporary American Poetry: Behind the Scenes and The Longman Anthology of Poetry
"The poems in Bart Edelman's The Last Mojito offer us a modest, straight-faced take on a surreal landscape that is recognizably our own, from “Little Daddy's Thanksgiving" visit to the troops to the humble sanctification of “The Potato.” It's a world where “The dog is not your friend," so it's “Better to stick with the snake." Drawn in by the poems' rhythms of plausibility, and by their unexpected detail, we find ourselves assenting to the wry vision with a resigned acceptance akin to that of the poet."—Sandra Kohler, The Country of Women and The Ceremonies of Longing
"Bart Edelman is one of my favorite poets -- spare and smart, lyrical but never sentimental about the mechanics of love. In this new collection, The Last Mojito, he invokes figures both public and private to get at the “long drawn out sorrow" of our silent hearts. Edelman is an elegist, writing laments for our daily losses and capitulations, yet seeing hope where, by all rights, it should not exist. In the process, he continually exposes the difficult dynamics of what it means to be human."—David L. Ulin, editor, Another City: Writing from Los Angeles and Writing Los Angeles: A Literary Anthology
"Bart Edelman's poems in The Last Mojito are searching and direct testaments from one who understands the sadness of the everyday, as well as its small victories. The poet's heart lies with the undervalued and misunderstood -- those for whom love redeems some things, but not enough. Doesn't that sound, reader, a bit like you and me?"—Charles Harper Webb, Liver and Tulip Farms and Leper Colonies
"Shouldn’t a poem make something happen? What would it be like, a poem that makes you sweat, bare your teeth, flush with blood, tear up, emit sharp sounds? Perhaps something like the lines of these poems in The Last Mojito -- elegant, slim knives that prick the reader into dark or bright laughter. With humor and a sly simplicity, Bart Edelman’s imagination, broad as the Great Plains, carries us from the ghosts of slaughtered buffalo to the president’s “lovesick missile” to teach us the “apocryphal lessons” of lust and politics. He cuts us a bit in the process. And yes, we bleed." —Tony Barnstone, editor, The Anchor Book of Chinese Poetry and The Art of Writing: Teachings of the Chinese Masters
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 THE GENTLE MAN (2001)
"So much in our life asks us to speed up, to charge ahead. These poems ask something else—take some time here, and then come back and sit again. Thankfully, the subsequent visits are well worth the effort."
—Eloise Klein Healy
"Not quite like any other poetry I’ve read… Bart Edelman’s complex and inexhaustible song in The Gentle Man concerns the admission that “What I really know about love/Could never amount to much.” With this as a given, we experience a poetry of “ultimate shadow”: lovers only playing house, ghosts arriving at our front doors, lovers simultaneously stealing and giving. The gentle man yearns for a bat’s instinct of echolocation so that he can steer clear of misery, but collides with walls of desire and loss that seem part of our inner-architecture. Reading this unexpected, unusual, troubling book, I kept thinking of Emerson’s “Up again, old heart!” And my deep anxieties were answered with poetry."
—William Heyen
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 THE ALPHABET OF LOVE (1999)
"Often humorous, always tender-hearted, Bart Edelman is the best kind of poet we have: he doesn’t talk low to the masses, and he doesn’t talk pretentious for the esoteric few. Call him a poet for an elite readership—an elite, however, that encompasses an immense public who love literature. “Twelve black pearls/Sang to me” he writes in one poem. But the entire collection of shimmering pearls sings to a multitude of grateful readers when they spell out, poem by poem, The Alphabet of Love."
—Oscar Mandel, Fundamentals of the Art of Poetry
"All of the tightly woven, passionate lines in Bart Edelman’s The Alphabet of Love enter your heart, where they cast a hypnotic spell that leaves you with new insights about love (“The Locket”), hate (“The Little Ghosts”), despair (“Footsteps”), and even whimsy (“The Alphabet of Love”). Edelman has made a significant contribution to contemporary poetry by using language—figurative and literal—that lays bare the paradoxes and ironies of human pain and joy."
—Jo Ray McCuen, Readings for Writers
"Bart Edelman’s elegant, lean poems penetrate directly to the heart of human life."
—Miriam Sagan
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 UNDER DAMARIS' DRESS (1996)
“Edelman manages to catch our darkest fantasies and secrets and grudging
loves with grace and wit. His poetry also honors love and the erotic… a very
promising poet.”
Stephen Minot, Three Genres
“Bart Edelman’s poetry is true art. These beautiful knowing poems are about loneliness, love and isolation, poems which have at their center a stillness as well
as a strong presence.”
Cheri Davis Langdell, W S Merwin
“Edelman’s poetry shows an artist at work. Always in control of his craft, Edelman
lets the humor, the fear, and the humanity involved in any person’s life shine
through… His poetry is touching, poignant, metaphoric and breathtaking.”
Mike Cluff, Inside English
“Edelman’s work delves into the wonderment of childhood and the uncertainty
of aging.”
Rick Holguin, Los Angeles Times
“Edelman’s poetry rings with clarity, exactness and honesty… Edelman curls himself
underneath other people’s skins, where he is able to speak from their experiences
and understand their feelings and truths… Edelman guides his readers to his places,
shows them images and confides in them.”
Angela Phipps, Glendale News-Press
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 CROSSING THE HACKENSACK (1993)
“Edelman has written movingly about the cultural and emotional limbo of living abroad.”
—Susan Heeger, Los Angeles Times
“Edelman’s absorbing collection is filled with recognizable ironies, passions
and personal moments that reconcile us to the fact that life is a contradictory
journey toward hope.”
Jo Ray McCuen, Readings for Writers
“Edelman bridges the two worlds of scholarly poetry and the oral traditions
of street poetry to create a rich work of art which touches the reader on many
levels. His poetry appeals not only to the intellect but also to the emotions.”
Michael Logue, Steel and Ivy, Chapman University
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