Soft Box ― Poems

"This poet writes like a woman with a mission. Her collection resounds with an honesty that is at once brutal and determined. "You will not go hungry into a strange soil," she writes to her jaundiced infant....Bland browbeats her way through a sort of autobiography. The characters, primarily family--mother, father, stepfather, husband, children dead and alive....Held fast by neat lines and stanzas, these poems batter on concepts such as the connection between sex and death....Soft Box speaks for itself and does not speak softly. Bland writes like a woman possessed, and the result is bewitching..." --ForeWord Magazine

CELIA BLAND is the author of thirteen books for young readers, including the historical novel, The Conspiracy of the Secret Nine, which was a finalist for the Heekin Award for Children's Fiction. Her poetry has been collected in anthologies published by Persea and Faber & Faber, and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. She is a contributing editor to The New York Public Library Desk Reference, and has published articles in Poets & Writers, Forbes Best of the Web, Art & Antiques and other magazines. She lives in New York's Hudson Valley and is Director of College Writing at Bard College