Virtue, Big as Sin [Paperback]

Poetry. VIRTUE, BIG AS SIN is impressively wide-ranging in theme and style. It illuminates everyday vignettes with solicitous spotlights such as the bereaved son sorting the contents of his father's medicine cabinet, or the father whose son's driver's education recalls the time his own unharnessed Mustang went bungeeing around a bend; it celebrates the artist's creative highs, or reflects on the misfortunate who is forever nearing the threshold of achievement, aware that life may prove a most inept librettist and should thus be paired with our strongest song. Osen's dexterity with both formal and free verse is apparent. His wit and humor prevent the serious from becoming ponderous while his intelligent insight lends depth to the lighthearted. Reading and rereading this outstanding debut collection, it is easy to see why—from the first poem to the last—it is a worthy winner of the 2012 Able Muse Book Award.

Frank Osen's VIRTUE, BIG AS SIN offers one witty, elegant poem after another. The rhymes are especially clever, the meter sure, the stanzas well-shaped, but this poet's sense of proportion is also reflected in wisdom (and what is wisdom but a sense of proportion?). An urbane maker of sparkling phrases like 'that genuine Ur of the ersatz,' Osen can also write plainly, movingly, about a young girl's funeral. And he reflects often on art itself, which he so rightly calls 'the conjured awe.' —Mary Jo Salter

In his talent for tragedy and comedy, and for mixing them, Osen takes his place in a distinguished line of English-language poets that runs from Chaucer and Shakespeare down to our day. —Timothy Steele Reading VIRTUE, BIG AS SIN has left me with the sense of satisfaction and enduring pleasure that really good poetry always produces, even when it also does the rest of what honest writing may do: confirm suspicions about ourselves we wish we could refute, bring to mind aspects of nature we'd rather forget, and dl³˜