[Ordinary, Moving] is one of the liveliest and most original volumes of poetry that I have come across in several years. Mrs. Gotlieb's style is based upon the established mode [of taut, terse phrasing, drawn from daily speech, filled with images from daily observation, and composed in free verse], but it is continually infiltrated and invigorated by an impressive, almost bewildering number of ancillary influences: Dylan Thomas, nursery rhymes, children's game-songs, Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience, along with passages of graffiti and echoes of American Negro ballads; then there is also a strong infusion of Jewish and French traditions, with words constantly drawn from these and other linguistic sources…. The volume is designed to have a measure of unity, beginning with ancestral memories, moving on through scenes of daily life, mingled with memories, and concluding, as it began, with a poem (this time a long one) entitled...