Praise for VOICES OF WOMEN SINGING:
--"VOICES OF WOMEN SINGING is a funny, tragic, wonderful book . . . Stoneback writes always with good humor and great passion--about Paris, about love, about grief and joy, about the gains and losses of more than half a century gone."
Alex Andriesse Shakespeare, writer, Boston College
--"A virtuosic synthesis of disparate forms and haunting formulations, VOICES OF WOMEN SINGING is 'life-writing' of a wholly new and overwhelming kind, 'written' in the fullest sense and born of a life lived with passionate intensity."
William Bedford Clark, poet-critic, Texas A&M University
--"H. R. Stoneback's VOICES OF WOMEN SINGING . . . [is] an epic account of roots and sources, and it's close to the bone, intimate beyond words, stirring. Love is at the center of this book: romantic love, love of music, and love as a driving (and saving) force."
William Boyle, writer, University of Mississippi
--"There are only a few voices I can listen to and feel the way I ought to feel in church. H. R. Stoneback's VOICES OF WOMEN SINGING captures some of those voices . . . These are sacred songs; these are eternal poems. Listen slowly with infinite love and compassion."
Matthew Nickel, poet-editor, University of Louisiana
And, from the back cover of VOICES, among a host of laudatory comments from leading writers about Stoneback's recent volumes of poetry, a few excerpts:
--"[Stoneback's CAFE MILLENNIUM] performs an act of verbal hypnosis on its reader."
Billy Collins, Poet Laureate
--"These poems [SINGING THE SPRINGS] spring and sing right out of the earth . . .I hug these songs to my heart."
Catherine Aldington, French poet-translator, Imagist
--"The poem [HOMAGE: A LETTER TO ROBERT PENN WARREN] is a delight, a great read, a rumble of energy all the way through . . . the rhythmic roll and strut."
Dave Smith, poet, editor THE SOUTHERN REVIEW, Coleman Professor of Poetry, Johns Hopkins
--"What I love about Stoneback's poetry is that it makes you love poetry . . . He's a bard, celebratory and rhythmical, with an unmistakable voice and he gets and begets the numinous nature of poiesis."
Allen Josephs, writer, University of West Florida
--[Stoneback is a] Postmodern modernist extraordinaire!"
John R. O. Gery, poet, Director Ezra Pound Center for Literature
[On HEMINGWAY"S PARIS: OUR PARIS?]
--"Stoneback's lyrical prose takes the reader inside the soul of Hemingway's Paris to reveal tantalizing secrets."
A.E. Hotchner, writer, Hemingway colleague, author of the classic PAPA HEMINGWAY
--"Stoneback's evocation of Hemingway's Paris is as close as I have come to reliving those Paris days in the company of Ernest Hemingway."
Valerie Hemingway, writer
