A review by sakeriver
O Lady, Speak Again by Dayna Patterson

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.