Praise for Lust:
“Diana Raab’s poetry collection, Lust, will make you fall head-over- heels in love with words. Words that are strung together, knotted like a perfect strand of opera length pearls. Some read like heartbreaking short stories. Some read like pieces of your soul. Some read like scented love-letters. Some like tearful, regretful voice messages. If you want to have a love affair with the written word, please, read this collection. It will make you a believer. Or maybe…just maybe, it will make you a believer in the pure absolute beauty of Diana Raab.”
~Amy Ferris, author of Marrying George Clooney and Confessions From A Midlife Crisis
“In the lyric tradition of Song of Songs, Rumi, Lady Murasaki, and Anais Nin, poet Diana Raab sings of carnal desire. The themes of Lust, the transcendence of sexual ecstasy, the range of its expression, the sorrow of its temporality, the surprise of its renewal in maturity, the physicality of its intimacy, are, at once, timeless and as contemporary as Raab’s short leather skirt and an espresso shared at Starbucks.”
~Tristine Rainer, author of Your Life as Story and The New Diary
“Diana Raab in this daring book offers what shouldn’t be so remarkable, yet is, a fearless detailing of intimacy, of blissful ‘acts of kindness,’ of that worshipful sexuality which forms our birth—and adult right. Lust celebrates the sacred ‘everlasting eros’ that we must admit most interests us, the giving and taking, the ultimate bonding, the very enlightenment through glories of the body. She sings ‘your oasis in the midst of me,’ and bless her for it!”
~Barry Spacks, Poet Laureate Emeritus, Santa Barbara
“Diana Raab’s Lust overflows with lust for the forbidden, lust that can become love, and lust for the poem that can represent human passions at their highest and lowest tides. These poems are propelled by an energy of ‘oozing sensual adrenaline.’ Desire deepens as bodies change—in sickness and in health, between a blush and a sigh—and Raab’s language for desire is always ready to get up and dance about the room.”
~Tony Trigilio, Director of Creative Writing/Poetry, Columbia College Chicago
“Daring, delicious, mesmerizing and just this side of dangerous, Diana Raab’s poems extol lust’s ecstasy, luxuriate in its all-consuming passion, and, when lust is spent, languish in its painful aftermath. These poems explore the human condition from the female perspective; from the perspective of a person in love with lust.”
~Alexis Rhone Fancher, Author of How I Lost My Virginity To Michael Cohen & Other Heart Stab Poems, poetry editor of Cultural Weekly
“This is a gorgeous book of poetry. It is as hot as you would expect, given the title. Many of the poems reveal scorching, intimate moments between passionate lovers. But these poems go way beyond erotica. What makes them special for me is how they call forth the essence of intimacy’s gifts. For instance, in one of my favorite selections, ‘Create,’ the first line evokes the very nature of what love offers us: ‘Make me the person I want to become, draw from me the secrets buried under, the facade of responsibilities.’ Wow. Buy this book for everyone you know who lusts…and loves.”
~ Charlotte Rains Dixon
“Diana Raab’s fifth book of poems dives deep into the compulsive heart of love and sex without restraint. This is a love of middle age, rich in desire, steeped in experience, and vulnerable too, with a speaker who connects totally with her lover, shadowed by the knowledge of disconnection, loss, even betrayal. It is herself, and her own body, scarred yet blooming, that remains constant.
“In Lust, Diana Raab celebrates the human capacity for passion, intensity and pleasure. In particular, these erotic poems explore pleasures deeply rooted in physical sensation. Much of the collection’s narrative depicts the speaker engaged in an intense sexual affair with a dynamic lover. While one may read the series of poems as a memorable account of a relationship, I see the affair as a metaphor for something larger.
“Diana Raab’s latest poetry collection, Lust, is a veritable cornucopia of luscious, lusty, ‘whoa baby!’ poems that give erotica a good name. Tantalizing and sexy, this collection oozes with sensuality, love, desire, fear and regret – all the emotions that come with loving someone, figuratively and literally.”
~Marcia Meier
“Diana Raab throws the door wide open to hotel rooms, bedrooms, and jungles where instinct and desire are uncensored, truth tumbles out, sprawled across the sheets. When a woman bares her body, heart, and soul across the pages of a boldly titled book, the stars shine and align in affirmation of honesty, vulnerability and courage. Brava for Diana’s bare and bold LUST.”
~ Janet Lucy
“If you are in love or lust, or preferably both, or once were, or still hold out hope, Diana Raab’s “Lust” is a book for you. Many of Raab’s poems feel spontaneous . . . although it’s likely a measure of her great skill.”
~ S.K. Figler
“The feelings aroused by sex, love and loss are so rich and intense that we struggle to name their nuances. Diana Raab does a fine job of this . . . I admire her skill at describing states of ecstasy so well while scarcely naming a body part.”
~ Phil Mayes
“Lust by Diana Raab is a collection of erotic and romantic poetry, a person’s most inner being . . . Raab’s poetry speaks of tenderness and the delight of escape through flights of love, and yet there is a sadness that lurks beneath the surface of these erotic fantasies. It’s like a loneliness that lingers after giving readers a glimpse into love and the disappointment of a relationship . . . I can easily say all of these poems have left an impression on me and I would avidly recommend this collection.”
~ Lanise Brown
“Beautiful. Provocative, dramatic, passionate words. I keep this by my bed and read a selection every night. Time richly spent.”
~ R.L. Black
“Sensuous and moving, Lust is about what it means to be a woman in love with life.”
~ Darlyn Finch Kuhn
“This collection of poems expresses in everyday imagery, the depth of intimacy. The words draw you in to explore a vulnerable and fragile space.”
~ Gusterous
“Diana invests her poetry with the light of simple truths, like loneliness and desire, the passage of time, the hunger that is never quite satiated . . . she writes about a committed love, still passionate after children and decades — despite age and utter familiarity, or perhaps because of these . . . Poems to stir your mind as much as your libido. I highly recommend these.”
~Susan Wyler
