Reviews

O Lady, Speak Again by Dayna Patterson

sakeriver's review

5.0

The poems here use the women in Shakespeare’s plays, either in persona or as subject, to talk about patriarchy, motherhood, sexuality, religion, heritage. This framework is interesting in itself, since both the characters as written and their reimagining in an explicitly feminist context provides fertile ground. But the question that kept coming back to me as I read was, “What is the use of persona doing in these poems?” And, interestingly, one of the poems near the end of the collection actually addresses this directly, foregrounding the way metaphor and persona allow a distance between poet and poem.

I’m not an expert in Shakespeare’s plays, so I’m sure there is a lot of nuance and meaning here that went over my head, but even without a deep knowledge of the plays, there’s enough here both in terms of form and subject matter to make it an engaging read. And it’ll be worth coming back for a second look, I think.

bibliothecarivs's review

adventurous challenging dark emotional inspiring mysterious reflective sad medium-paced

4.0

jcd1013's review

slow-paced

4.5

I loved Dayna's first book of poetry, If Mother Braids a Waterfall, so eagerly sought this out. Her use of Shakespeare's female characters as the voices of the poems is ingenious  and the poems were fresh and lyrical. I would love an audiobook format, as I think I missed some of the meaning. 

revmegankelly's review

reflective

5.0

Even as someone who hasn’t really engaged Shakespeare since high school, there was still much to connect with in this book, including its desire for women’s stories to be told differently and its engagement with issues that still can rock us to our core: family dynamics with our family of origin, shifting faith, motherhood, infertility + more. Dayna provides many moments of beautiful, captivating language as she explores these themes, all while drawing on a variety of poetic forms.