Critical Commentary

In To Tango with the Dead Shirley Kobar takes us into terrain that is inevitable for all humans, and yet delicate language of this poetry helps us to keep balance within the sorrow of loss. Indeed, we do better than keep balance as we dance with this poetry from death back to life. Amid the dead grass, a grape hyacinth sends forth its bloom, and the poet reaches out to open the “new leaves/ of your eyes.”
--Elizabeth Robinson contest judge.