“The complete works – so far – of contemporary American and British poetry’s most meticulous craftsperson. We dig the purity, dogged love, and artistic devotion of this rare personage. A highly recommended volume” (Alice Notley)
“In these mostly unabashedly lyrical poems Simon Pettet flaunts his proud independence of curent poetic fashions, like a dragon-fly shimmering and hovering” (Gerrit Lansing)
“The poems of Simon Pettet are placed on continual high alert in a rush of subtle coloring. The shadings match those of affectionate curiosity and cut-through street wisdom. Pettet sees through the moment to the words that restore the moment’s contours.” (Bill Berkson)
‘I highly recommend Simon Pettet’s new collection, Hearth. His poetry is always insightful, ardent, playful, right on the spot, and ahead of the current.” (Joanne Kyger)
“A former English waif, but for decades a pillar of the St Mark’s Poetry Project, the core of all that is New York about the New York School, Simon Pettet offers another collection of tough, fragile musings..” (John Ashbery)
“Simon Pettet’s exquisite, irreducible poems transmit lyrical shape and sense-oriented wonder with a numinous focus and care I find nowhere else in the art. They are among my necessities” (Anselm Berrigan)
“Simon Pettet has been such a bright and consistent light amidst the usual gathering glooms. He lives as though life were its own pleasure, which it is and must obviously be. He sounds those same simplicities of profound music (William) Blake also knew. He moves with a deft and practiced quiet. ‘It is as though this small space/ contains the pattern for/ all eternity’ He speaks the truth” (Robert Creeley)
“Reading Simon Pettet’s poems is like entering a cottage in the woods that expands into a chateau of the lost domain as soon as you cross the threshold: then the music starts up, for surprise and recognition to perform intricate minuets with the reader’s cognitive receipts. Magical, revivifying, masterful – how many adjectives can dance on the top of a pin? Enter, brothers and sisters,entrez!” (Anselm Hollo)
“Like Beethoven’s Bagatelles, Simon Pettet’s short poems have a great deal to say, and their seemingly modest dimensions help rather than hinder his saying it. An unorthodox lucidity reminiscent of (James) Schuyler, a certain English dappleness and an oriental concision blend in poetry, whose sweet, complex fragrance is Pettet’s secret” (John Ashbery)
