F2F

"Holmes's attention to sound ("write with light / durable words indelible") is familiar poetic territory, but here it takes on new meaning because it so exceeds, or opposes, the text-messaging medium from which the language is drawn. This is like William Carlos Williams's experiments-or Bob Creeley's-in the excerpting and reframing of casual speech; the perception that a general method could be applied to a new, apparently unpromising and impoverished linguistic realm is one of the book's most forward brilliances." -Charles O. Hartman, Connecticut College

"E, Echo, Eurydice, Emily and Eros-legacy resonance meets current disturbance f2f in Janet Holmes's melancholy music; reader, she addresses you, as she gently probes, pings, love life on the network." -Stephanie Strickland, author of V: WaveSon.nets/Losing L'una

"In F2F, the word-wall between author and reader becomes a projection screen for a shadow-play of sad couplings-Echo and Narcissus, Eurydice and Orpheus, a pair of instant-messaging lovers. Be warned: the witty, techy feel of Holmes' writing is the flashy surface of a bruising vision of human interaction in which self-exposure is impossible and invisibility is punishingly lonely." -Catherine Wagner, author of Macular Hole and Miss America

"Drawing heavily from the compact linguistic style of modern text messaging, F2F (shorthand for 'face to face,' that is, meeting someone in real life rather than in cyberspace) draws both upon modern experience and upon classic dichotomies of myth as it represents the technological communications of love." -The Midwest Book Review

"Janet Holmes' fourth poetry collection, F2F, explores how people communicate and how the loss of sight results in isolation. Holmes, who once worked in software development, bridges the language of technology with the language of poetry." -BookPleasures.com