Rating: 
Summary: A fearless magic
Review:
Poet Fennelly's approach to motherhood is exquisitely intimate, yet accessible as she explores the deep emotions that burst free when a woman gives birth, defining the indefinable, expressing thoughts that most are afraid to acknowledge, let alone put into words.
Truly, motherhood unearths a vast reservoir of visceral feelings, both familiar and unfamiliar; yet Fennelly writes in such a way as to expose that sensitive emotional underbelly suddenly made vulnerable. In language both simple and profound, these poems celebrate the joy of a child's complete dependency, the sensation of newborn skin and sharp pain at the merest thought of loss. This poet mines language until it serves up the desired effect, plunging into private thoughts and fears with a passionate intensity:
"The great dramas all begin like this:
a surfeit of happiness, a glass-smooth pond
just begging for a stone."
Harrowing, erotic and blissful, Fennelly pushes beyond the sentimental into the bittersweet experience of new motherhood. The poet explores both joy and loss, birth and death, as she celebrates her daughter, Claire, yet grieves the loss of one she lost, another girl, probing those feelings like a tongue testing a tender tooth, aware that life's realities are not to be denied. Tender Hooks (a childish misnomer of "tenterhooks") fills me with images and awakened feelings, a quiet excitement at having found this wonderful poet. I cannot imagine that I might have missed this stunning collection. Luan Gaines/2004.
Rating: 
Summary: this woman sounds off
Review: "A Reader from Atlanta" and Beth Ann Fennelly both need to educate themselves. I frankly couldn't agree more with Mr. Ward. I am absolutely sick of the kind of poetry like Fennelly's that gets attention for being risque and revealing. What a joke!! Keep your poems about mama and baby birds to yourself.
Rating:
Summary: A Must-Have
Review: Fennelly is one of the best poets of our age. She writes everything from heroic couplets to free verse with grace and eloquence. She demonstrates rare intelligence, wit, and sensitivity. Her poems originate in the specific geography of a woman's life, but they do not wallow in self-absorbed introspection. Rather, they investigate the relation between self and world, the individual and her many communities. I've given Fennelly's poems to many people from many disparate walks of life (men and women, everyone from students to wildlife educators to mortgage brokers to my 75 year old grandmother), and every single person I've given her books to has become a fan. Her poetry is accesible to new readers, but her intelligence, mastery of form, and ongoing conversation with the works of poets before her continue to challenge even advanced scholars of poetry. Her work is accomplished and powerful.
Rating:
Summary: Just went to a reading of her poetry
Review: First, Fennelly is NOT a Southerner. Second, and maybe more importantly, her work is typical of the MFA poetry mill verse which plagues the current literary landscape. Her themes are risky, yes, if she was writing about them forty years ago when introducing the idea of women's bodies and being frank about sexuality and reproduction -- in the way she does it -- had not become hackneyed. Certainly there is much serious work to be done in exploring these issues, yet Fennelly simply cannot rise beyond cliche. In fact, much of her work might easily be considered reactionary to the important causes of women. This collection is shockingly absent of thoughtful responses to serious contemporary concerns, and I was disappointed.
Rating:
Summary: HOOKED!
Review: I avidly read poetry once, and for a long time, but I eventually grew tired of what I saw was a trend toward precious lessons on lexicon rather than on life. Beth Ann Fennelly is different. There is geniune experience underlying the pages of TENDER HOOKS, and experience-bred passion, and wit, and bravery, and evident love. The best of Fennelly is on par with the best of Wilbur and Larkin and Bishop and Frost, and I'm thinking especially of her baby poems, especially the first two. They leave me breathless on every read.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful book
Review: I do not regularly read poetry, but a friend recommended this book to me recently. Ms. Fennelly's poems are smart and funny and very frank. I never thought I'd enjoy poetry this much! Many of these poems will really speak to mothers - but I think this will appeal to both men and women alike. Ms. Fennelly has the courage to say what many of us think but were afraid to verbalize. This would be a wonderful mother's day gift!
Rating: 
Summary: Well, I'll be...
Review: I don't know when I have heard so much heated talk about poetry! Wonderful! I do have to say that I thought Ms. Fennelly's little book of poems was a bit on the trite side, but bless her heart for putting these quaint little poems out there. Every one needs a hobby, after all.That Mr. Ward needs to write a little more clearly if he wants people to take his views to heart and that sarcastic man from Atlanta might better stick to talking about the poems instead of attacking other people. But that's just the opinion of one woman. Keep up the good talk; we all need to bring poetry to light and life!
Rating:
Summary: Lovely, amazing, smart, funny, sad.
Review: I don't read that much poetry, but this book took my breath away. I bought it because Lucinda Williams has a quote on the back, and now I'm an even bigger fan of hers. Ms. Fennelly writes poems that are both clear and strange, poems I "got," poems I'll read over and over and over and over. I'll say this, too: Her daughter and husband are fortunate. Buy this book for your mother for Mother's Day, and for your father for Father's Day. I hope one of those book clubs picks it up, because it's mostly women who read those recommended books, and this is a book women will love. Of course, men will too--I'm proof of that.
Rating:
Summary: BOOOOOORING!!
Review: I love poetry. Poetry is great. Poetry is one of the greatest things known to man. But there is a new generation of poets (and a lot of the time poetesses) that just miss the mark. They think it's about being deep and profound instead of what it always has been about, human emotion. This book of poems really really sucks. And that's a very non-poetic way of saying it. To put it in poetry : there was was a poetess/ who wrote some poems more or less/ but they were quite crappy/ made me want to take a nappy/ when i was done my brain felt compressed.
Rating:
Summary: This book is a treasure
Review: I read poetry and teach poetry writing, and I've seen Fennelly's poems around a bit. Tender Hooks was recommended to me by a student, and then I saw a review of it in The Atlanta Journal Constitution that interested me, so I bought it and I'm so glad I did. My favorite poem is "Telling the Gospel Truth" which I'd seen in The Kenyon Review last year. I found it very moving and accomplished with its references to Dickinson and Donne and others--formally exciting and emotionally brave. I love the range of work, from a sonnet and a few extremely short poems to several poems that are 5-10 pages long. The book itself is also physically gorgeous. Really, the whole experience of reading it--and rereading it-- was brilliant.
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