The Rule of Participation

Joyce James has honed her poet's voice to a keen edge in this collection of her work. Her evocative poetry haunts the heart and imagination. Her work is lauded by Seamus Heaney, Editor of the 1984 Special Poetry Issue of Ploughshares who selected "Wild Canaries on a Twenty-Mile Stretch of Highway" and "Catbirds" for publication in that volume. In his review of "Catbirds" Heaney wrote, "I think it's a lovely, pure, exultant yet wounded music and world that you conjure." 

After Heaney read Ms. James’s poem, “The Wild Canaries on a Twenty-Mile Stretch of Highway,” at his Ploughshares reading, he spoke of the poem having special meaning for him.

Joyce James is often lost in search engines to James Joyce, and like the Irishman, she has a gift for metaphor in her writing. Compact and filled with emotional imagery, Joyce James's work sings, a lyrical trigger of melancholy, joy, and memory.