This was my fourth review as an Amazon Kindle Book Review team member.

Strange and wonderful, covering a lot of ground. Human and memorable.

Three stars.

Wait: don’t let the three stars decide for you. This is an interesting and difficult work to rate. Maybe three point four nine nine nine stars. There is a wide range of material covering many situations. The human condition is explored in eleven prose pieces and twenty  poems. Make that ten  plus twenty one, as the opening prose piece is quite poetic, Summer’s Last Wild Irises.

You will be in a train in Russia, a garden at MIT, a boat in San Diego area, on the Eiger, and on the edge of a small lake. There is sadness in some of the love poems, and hope sometimes too. This poet isn’t afraid to make a little fun of herself as well, as in Pacific Ode. In Offshore Sailing you will find new and strong images. Other poems are quiet, gentle reflections of nature. There is social commentary in A Common Feast, which takes place in a laundromat, and in A Conversation Between Friends, which almost becomes an argument.

In this second edition six new prose pieces have been added, plus one new poem, and they are strong. In Hugo you will feel the terror of being at sea in that hurricane. Journey to Kiev has been edited, and I like this version even better. This story should be re-read to appreciate how cleverly the situations are set up, and the passion allowed to come through. At the end we feel the protagonist’s regret, unforgettably caught up in a dream/nightmare train image, taking love away.

If I had to make a tiny carp it would be that, sometimes, the phrasing could have been smoother, and the rhymes, when present, were occasionally imperfect.

Conclusion: in Moments of the Heart, you are in for a strange and wonderful trip, a most interesting read. Many of the individual pieces are quite unique. This is a writer of wide range and strength. Recommended.

Reviewed by Jim Bennett, KBR Review Team