Scan barcode
toniclark's review
5.0
Lyric, narrative poems of grief and loss. Woloch's poems are just gorgeous. I love the poems about her father, the beautiful love poems, and all the memories of Paris here. I could read it over and over -- and I probably will. It's taboo to use the word luminous in a review, so I won't, but you get the idea. Exquisite also comes to mind.
Carol Muske-Dukes said of this collection, "The book is zany with music -- from Le Jazz Hot to bluegrass to gypsy violins. These are poems full of wind, light and whistle-stops -- though she takes on weighty subjects: family and European history -- much in the style of an old-fashioned Continental romantic. Yet the plight of Eastern Europe (in the beautiful far mountains where her father's people rose up) is at the heart of the book. These are the poems of a wild girl, a gypsy, a young lover -- she finds a new version of herself in the most written-about (a bridge over the Seine) and also remote and obscure places -- yet never fails to include the reader. . . ."
Here's the title poem:
CARPATHIA
Having rinsed off the soot and stink
of the Polish train,
having sung with the child.
Having eaten and laughed and wept,
had my vodka with apple juice,
my bread.
Having walked through the fields
at dusk, and into the forest
and back again--
meadows of buttercups,
thistles with bristling heads,
the first blue cornflowers of June.
Having opened my arms to the sky
falling back on itself
in my dizziness.
Having taken the small purple berries
that dropped from the wild bush
into my palm
--Siberian berries, like tiny plums--
put their sweet bitter inkiness
onto my tongue.
Having failed and failed at love.
Having gone anyway,
breath after breath.
Having trusted the world to be kind
and stood in the doorway
and listened for wolves
and heard my own dead in the high
grass whispering,
beloved, beloved, beloved.
Carol Muske-Dukes said of this collection, "The book is zany with music -- from Le Jazz Hot to bluegrass to gypsy violins. These are poems full of wind, light and whistle-stops -- though she takes on weighty subjects: family and European history -- much in the style of an old-fashioned Continental romantic. Yet the plight of Eastern Europe (in the beautiful far mountains where her father's people rose up) is at the heart of the book. These are the poems of a wild girl, a gypsy, a young lover -- she finds a new version of herself in the most written-about (a bridge over the Seine) and also remote and obscure places -- yet never fails to include the reader. . . ."
Here's the title poem:
CARPATHIA
Having rinsed off the soot and stink
of the Polish train,
having sung with the child.
Having eaten and laughed and wept,
had my vodka with apple juice,
my bread.
Having walked through the fields
at dusk, and into the forest
and back again--
meadows of buttercups,
thistles with bristling heads,
the first blue cornflowers of June.
Having opened my arms to the sky
falling back on itself
in my dizziness.
Having taken the small purple berries
that dropped from the wild bush
into my palm
--Siberian berries, like tiny plums--
put their sweet bitter inkiness
onto my tongue.
Having failed and failed at love.
Having gone anyway,
breath after breath.
Having trusted the world to be kind
and stood in the doorway
and listened for wolves
and heard my own dead in the high
grass whispering,
beloved, beloved, beloved.
lichenbitten's review
5.0
"Didn't I stand there once,
white-knuckled, gripping the just-lit taper,
swearing I'd never go back?
And hadn't you kissed the rain from my mouth?
And weren't we gentle and awed and afraid,
knowing we'd stepped from the room of desire
into the further room of love?
And wasn't it sacred, the sweetness
we licked from each other's hands?
And were we not lovely, then, were we not
as lovely as thunder, and damp grass, and flame?"
-- "Anniversary"
white-knuckled, gripping the just-lit taper,
swearing I'd never go back?
And hadn't you kissed the rain from my mouth?
And weren't we gentle and awed and afraid,
knowing we'd stepped from the room of desire
into the further room of love?
And wasn't it sacred, the sweetness
we licked from each other's hands?
And were we not lovely, then, were we not
as lovely as thunder, and damp grass, and flame?"
-- "Anniversary"
theladyofthehouseoflove's review
5.0
Woloch writes of moving, of grief, of love, all with great aplomb. I look forward to reading more from her.
More...