We grow so accustomed to hearing-and, let's admit it, to uttering-cliches that to encounter a person who seems unconstitutionally incapable of either produces an immediate shock. Arlene Pollack is like that, and so is her poetry, which is a good thing, because when poems get predictable you may as well use them to wrap fish. Ms. Pollack's art stuns. Even more importantly, her ideas stun, through a freshness of awareness, an untarnishable integrity, and a profound technical economy. She is a true artist, rarely comfortable or satisfied, and she writes very beautifully about practically...

CULLED FROM THE MIND of an offbeat octogenarian, these musings tell it like it was-and still is. Here you will find writing that runs the gamut from sublime to ridiculous, the poignant to the hilarious, and the philosophical to the nonsensical, depending on the reader's propensities.