The only world

by Lynda Hull

Lynda Hull's The Only World is the third and most ambitious collection by a poet who is one of the most dynamic and highly regarded figures of her generation. Completed shortly before her death, The Only World displays the dazzling lyric richness and unflinching examination of harrowing subject matter that were the hallmarks of Lynda Hull's poetry, and that in her final collection are explored in their most sustained and compelling fashion. In contrast to the safe domesticity of so much contemporary poetry, the poems of The Only World are decidedly unsafe; they confront some of the most pressing social and historical issues of our time - the Holocaust, the AIDS epidemic, and the violence of American cities - and they do so with a ferocity matched only by Hull's impeccable craftsmanship and deep compassion for the social outcasts who are so often her poem's protagonists. These are poems in which the personal and the autobiographical invariably fuse with the larger sorts of apocalypse ou