In their own words... "I do not think I have ever encountered a poet less self-consciously or more powerfully female. St. Germain does not try to intellectualize or abstract her gender; neither does she try to escape from it. I am that I am, as Someone once said: she accepts herself with a fullness, with an intensity, and with a gloriously swaggering melodiousness that are, I think, new to poetry in our language. - Burton Raffel, The Literary Review "Sheryl St. Germain is a courageous, wild , and disciplined poet….She faces the erotic, of body and mind-passionately, precisely, delineating "the damage that is beautiful." - Alicia Ostriker "Swamp Songs rings with intelligence and heart. The essays put us in touch with a place and time in a way wholly original, poetic, and precise. St. Germain's love for Louisiana winds its way through every paragraph like that indestructible wisteria in her mother's backyard." - Tim Gautreaux