A More Tender Ocean (Paperback, None)

Natalee Caple made quite a splash with her first two books, "The Heart is its Own Reason," a short-story collection from Insomniac Press, and "The Plight of Happy People in an Ordinary World," a novel from House of Anansi Press.

With "A More Tender Ocean" Caple turns her hand to poetry, and the results are no less dazzling. The poems were written using a Surrealist technique called automatic writing - a kind of poetic impressionism after speed-reading. The effect is a kind of dreamlike state - everything isn't quite as it should be, as though it had all been seen through the facet of a diamond. The poems are lyrical, erotic, gentle, happy, sad and strangely beautiful.

"A More Tender Ocean" is unusual but immensely moving and compelling, tender but not maudlin. 'What goes on seems ordinary, ' writes Caple. Rest assured, it is not.