SOURCE: A review of Life Sentence: Selected Poems, in Stand Magazine, Vol. 16, No. 2, Autumn, 1991, pp. 13-14.

In this review, Cassian's Life Sentence: Selected Poems is praised as "a remarkable book, full of joyous energy, utterly honest, and without self-pity."

Nina Cassian's life has been disrupted …, but as the poems in Life Sentence show clearly, nothing has succeeded in vanquishing her zestful brio. Whether recalling childhood, as in the fine poem "Part of a Bird", a free monologue which finally dissolves into humorous non-remembering as if distracted by its own attempt to summon the past, whether describing her own face ('Disjointed shape I'm destined to carry around'), or writing of the implications of love, as in "Kisses" ('heavy, slow, hurtful / where blood, voice and memory all take part'), a sense of relish is never far away. Her real subject is indeed love—its delights, but even more its bleak...