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“All her work is shot through with a historical consciousness. ... But there is also the present moment, and in “For Tracy”, as she watches her youngest daughter sleep, Rotstein evocatively captures the stab of terror a child’s vulnerability can inspire. ... If there’s a single theme that links a lifetime’s work, it’s just that — the impermanence of every human achievement, the fragility of peace, order and good government.”
—Maclean’s

“Her poetry [has] a descriptive prowess that cuts to the quick. Her textures of colour, light and history freeze moments to paper. ... And she does it with remarkable brevity. The difference between prose and poetry, wrote Samuel Taylor Coleridge, is that while prose requires putting words in their best order, poetry demands the best words in the best order. This Rotstein accomplishes, casting aside the superfluous and refining the remaining with a surgeon’s exactitude, leaving in her wake surprisingly large, and extremely rich, pictures. … Her children could be our children. Her geography is Canada’s. She has a strong sense of history, fair play and justice.”
—The Ottawa Citizen

“Poet Nancy-Gay Rotstein finds shards of inspiration most every place she goes, selectively vacuuming up images, ideas, emotions and insights that later are fashioned into one of her eloquent, no-nonsense poems. ... The scope is vast. ... Her reach is boundless.”
—Canadian Press

“She is an original. It is not just the words she writes, fashioned to fit a space on a page; they are words from the soul, given brilliant flight in the rare imagination of a daring spirit. ... You are drawn into her brilliant constructions, made to feel her layers of nuance. This book becomes a bedside companion, a wise friend who offers balm for pain and revives the aching spirit.”
—The Hamilton Spectator

“In portraying experiences that are both personal and universal, Rotstein reflects both the minute details and the broad sweep of time.”
—Calgary Herald

“Rotstein has the ability to find the soul in everything she observes, and her words reach into the heart. Her command of language, both its beauty and precision, is without peer. … She sees life through a poet’s eyes, and distills that experience into an essence of words — incisive, expressive, and perfect in their exactitude. … Every line is accessible… they lift the reader into a higher plane of awareness.”
—Kitchener-Waterloo Record

“Each word evokes an image or an emotion adding new dimensions to the reader’s journey through a time or place. … Rotstein’s poems exhibit an amazing ability to see beyond the banalities of daily life.”
—Sherbrooke Record

“This Horizon and Beyond is a luminous exploration of the ambit where history, impressions, memory and imagination pass into one another and through one another. How precious to be able to transform the uncertainty and emptiness of life into human potential and hope.”
—The Canadian Jewish News

“The book is the culmination of a quarter-century of writing poetry. ... And they are good. There is a gem-like quality to many of them with a precision in language that somehow makes her poems both specific and universal. … Some of Rotstein’s poems have an edge to them, depending on an economy of language and surprising twists of phrase that give them a punch. … Her best poems, perhaps, are those which deal with her family, and which appear in This Horizon and Beyond for the first time. They are tender and true and will speak to any parent anywhere.”
—Edmonton Journal

“Rotstein has something to say, and she says it well.”
—Victoria Times Colonist

A Sampling of Praise for her Previous Books of Poetry

“She uses words as if they were diamonds, selecting them sparingly and polishing them until they capture the exact image... or landscape that she wants.”
—Canadian Press

“Her language is sparse and clear.... Her imagination, her keen eyes and ears are very much her own.... Even if her lines were arranged like prose they would still be poetry.”
—Globe and Mail

“There’s a maturity now, which puts the writer into the first ranks of our poets. Although her canvas is much wider and broader today, the practitioner of this demanding craft has not lost the intimacy and insight into personal experiences and emotions that touch us.”
—Toronto Star

“Nancy-Gay Rotstein was granted a special writer's visa from the Chinese government that allowed her to travel throughout the country — much of which was closed at the time to foreigners. She has produced sharp commentaries on what she encountered.”
—Washington Post

“Rotstein’s poems say what we all feel momentarily — an awesome awareness of being alive. It is poetry for the people without any sacrifice of craft.”
—Ottawa Citizen

“You feel indebted to Nancy-Gay Rotstein for taking the blinders off your eyes, for giving you a crystal-clear vision of life that defies all the noise and confusion around us.”
—The Mirror

“Splendid.... Rotstein’s poems are warm and analytical, filled with insights and surprises as they endow the familiar with new significance.”
—Hamilton Spectator

“A strong satiric sense... genuine talent.”
—Winnipeg Free Press

“Impressive, vividly written... striking scenes, with not a word or image out of place.”
—Victoria Times Colonist

“Her poems contain a dense succession of images, feelings, and experiences, wedding richness with economy of expression, and conveying a vitality and immediacy.”
—Yorkshire Post (U.K.)

“...with a prescience which now seems extraordinary, Rotstein realized as early as 1980 that China was heading for another political revolution.”
—The Scotsman (U.K.)

“It took a poet, rather than a politician, and a poet's perception, to recognize the dangerous brink on which China stood — and to predict it long before it happened.... It is polished [poetry], fine, honed, full of sharp-etched images.”
—Eastern Daily Press (U.K.)

“It is a rare collection in that it is one of the few, in poetry or prose, by a Westerner that goes beyond the surface of China.”
—United Press International

“Few have a sharper eye for detail than Nancy-Gay Rotstein.”
—Detroit Free Press