Guernica Editions

Wolff's lyrics showcase a world of constant, ironic, and dreadful surprise. Her sensibility is attuned to reversals, and she chooses sharply cut images to communicate her plain-toned shock at the unexpected inconsistencies and awry events... Every incident is potentially stunning, in either an aggressive (negative) or passive (positive) fashion. Wolff's world possesses this precise doubleness... Wolff's work recalls that of U.S. poet Marianne Moore. There are the same plotted indents and line-lengths, the same detonating denotations.

Though Wolff's poems are full of striking imagery, it's their metaphoric reach that most impresses. Happiness and grief, love and conflict are subtly reflected through the prism of the natural world... Her vision is sharp indeed.

Elana Wolff's poems remind me of the poems of Jane Kenyon... in their conciseness, also in the translucent way they portray love, even in its darkest context.