Wake Wake Wake
Reading at the Nazim Hikmet Festival
"Like the millwright in her poem, Valerie Nieman seems "with bare hands (to) embrace live steam." Wake Wake Wake is sinew and tendon, hard muscle and bruised bone; the volume sings with every inch of the body and every breath of the spirit. If she speaks of "hearing that we have all fallen short," she yet believes-she knows-"the way a path is best walked/not by looking down/but by looking out."
Fred Chappell