Hemispheres (1984)

“Grace Schulman’s Hemispheres is full of beautiful, clear writing, and it has that first  requisite of poetry -- the world comes alive in the work. It opens with a blessing, a poem that leaps into the flames. With the full weight of her visionary intelligence brought to bear, the book looms up strange and fine.  There is nothing familiar about this poet’s genius; that is its burden, and its immeasurable gift.   -L. M. Rosenberg, The New York Times Book Review  April 7, 1985

“Fire is the image of the fierce song she hears in things eternal, and it burns in many poems here, quickening and sometimes searing. But even in the midst of her assurances is a dark counter-flame . . . Schulman is not a calculator, but an ecstatic. At times, she is a contemporary mystic in her impassioned ascents to song: ‘Borders that nullify me / to cancel edges, nullify horizons.’ But it is precisely disorder -- an emotional avalanche and leaching -- that is at the heart of her book, a series of poems about violated borders.” -J. D. McClatchy, TheHudson. Review, Spring, 1985