“Beth Ann Fennelly is an ambitious and spacious young talent. The poems range widely in form and subject matter. . .there is a striking accuracy of language and notable skill that sets them apart, displaying a promising, authentic voice.”

“With its high spirits, its love of textures of different kinds of writing, its search for ways to frame ambitious energies . . .the poem advances with a determination to keep the author interested and alive to her materials; in places, amused with itself and hopscotching, in places veering into unexpected depths; an immensely lively performance.”

“Fennelly’s poems are consistently dramatic, complex in their perceptions and formal unfolding, enthralled with language. . .This is one of the most interesting, challenging, and accomplished first books to appear in recent years. . .Genuinely outstanding.”

“Beth Ann Fennelly’s Open House marks an auspicious debut for a poet not yet thirty years of age. In poems ranging from blank verse variations on the traditional sonnet to a sustained mediation in the highly elliptical and haunting polyphonous postmodernist mode, Fennelly tempers cognitive power and sensual wordplay with a subversive wit born of wry self-knowledge.”

“Fennelly approaches language with playfulness and reverence, heady with possibilities, wary of dilution. She takes on personas such as Milton’s daughter or a survivor of the siege of Paris in dramatic narratives that one could forget are verse. Nearly half the book is a journal of the poetic mind in process, guarded by the internal critic, Mr. Daylater. For all that, Open House is surprisingly readable, ending with a handful of graceful love poems.”

“These poems can be elegiac, passionate, meditative, tender, angry, and funny by turns. Beth Ann Fennelly is clearly a poet to watch.”