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mary_soon_lee's review
3.0
Summer-reading book review #27: "The Doors of the Body," by Mary Alexandra Agner. This is a poetry chapbook about women, often women from story or mythology, their lives reimagined. All but three of the poems are narrated in the first-person by women ranging from Helen of Troy, to Irene Adler, to Gretel. The poems are slanted, clever--sometimes too clever for me--and beautifully phrased. I admire most of them more than I like them, but there were two that I loved: "Sleeping Beauty" and "The Harvest I Desire."
joannemerriam's review
5.0
[Full disclosure: Although we've never met, I know Agner slightly online from poetry communities we both belong to, and we will be doing a reading together in Nashville in March, where she will be promoting her new book The Scientific Method.]
This is an engaging book of poems which retell mythological stories and folk tales from the point of view of various female characters within the stories. I think any fan of these sorts of retellings will enjoy this book, even if they don't normally read much poetry. Agner is an accomplished poet, but in a very accessible vein. Mayapple Press has posted a sample (a wonderfully bittersweet retelling of the folk ballad "Oh My Darling, Clementine"), which will give some sense of Agner's lovely way with language.
This is an engaging book of poems which retell mythological stories and folk tales from the point of view of various female characters within the stories. I think any fan of these sorts of retellings will enjoy this book, even if they don't normally read much poetry. Agner is an accomplished poet, but in a very accessible vein. Mayapple Press has posted a sample (a wonderfully bittersweet retelling of the folk ballad "Oh My Darling, Clementine"), which will give some sense of Agner's lovely way with language.
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