Excerpts from
R A D I A N T _ F I E L D
By Naomi Long 2004 $9
Design by Mike Sarpy

Ten years ago, my child died, she says. She doesn't say, Our child. Then pulls her cap down to hide her eyes. From her lips, a slip of smoke resigns itself to air. I check the plants, take care not to break the blooms as I set a cage around each vine. When the tomatoes ripen, we go to market. Leave before daybreak. Drive for hours. Headlights cut into the night like pale blades pressed into a black pillow. And not a single sign to gauge the distances.

 

"The real subject of Long's work is how the intense and sustained concentration of the mind on these events produces an evocative and satisfyingly unresolved series of questions and assertions."

on Radiant Field by Noah Eli Gordon (Poetry Project Newsletter)

"a fascinating conjunction of prose poetry and obscure wide-lens photography running together, supporting each other in a passage through a strange verbal/visual landscape."

"This is an ingenious presentation. At the conclusion, I realize that the words have taken me in as intended, swept me along with the shadowy images that whiz past ... Mostly Naomi K. Long has created an intriguing alignment."

on Radiant Field by Paul Zimmer (The Georgia Review - Fall/Winter 2006 issue)