Waiting to Be Called

Poetry. With photography by Joan Scott. Claire Scott's great accomplishment is in knowing how to make poetry out of every part of her life. She's patient enough to hold opposites to the breaking point, and then to keep going toward that frontier where real poetry takes place. Each poem in WAITING TO BE CALLED lives in a world where nothing's sacred and yet everything's sacred. Just when you think she's taking you to a place too dark to enter, Claire makes you laugh. And when you think a poem's too funny to be a poem, Claire can make you cry. Scott's a poet who knows all the dance steps, but is never confined by any one of them, able to tease her own unique electricity out of ordinary human experience where grief and despair, joy and happiness, tragedy and comedy co- exist, where every word comes to new life and means something that it's never meant before.

A brilliant, eccentric, unique voice with a range that encompasses childhood violence and a God who comes to therapy. Claire Scott's lean, beautifully crafted language dares to be cynical about the world but is never without a deep compassion. These are poems that will be read over and over again as a seismograph of our time.--Kim Chernin

Just a note to let you know how much I love your poems, and appreciate your work. That you highlight and embrace 'the messiness of life in all its heavenly madness, ' is indeed challenging--yet, helps us live a little closer to the truth.--Linda Van Leuven

Claire Scott's poems are very well made. Familiar with the mad, yet stated so sanely.--Richard Stansberger, Poetry Editor, Red Savina Review