The Queen's Desertion: Poems

by Carol Frost

In her tenth collection of poems, Carol Frost describes a journey through loss. How can one regain equilibrium in the face of absences such as dementia and death? We have to keep moving, even while realizing that the loss of mind and body is the natural conclusion. At the beginning of the first poem Frost invokes the image of an empty or abandoned

Pretty to think of the mind at its end
as a metaphysician beekeeping
after the leaves have fallen at autumn's end.

The bee metaphor is handled brilliantly and subtly throughout the collection as a reminder of how often our constant activity, whether it is mental or physical, is taken for granted.

Frost continues her investigation of the mortal plight by entering into a Dantesque descent into the ebb and flow of the seascape. Body consumes body over and over again as fish are caught and killed and the poet observes the flora and fauna as they partake in the darker cycles of nature. A long narrative poem about the Spanish explorer de Baca and his harrowing travels from southern Florida to Mexico powerfully reinforces the certainty of consumption and loss as it comments on the colonizing of the new world. In the final section, Frost returns once more to the need for movement and summons the Greek god Pan, who dances a rite of acceptance through a metaphysical landscape on the verge of seasonal change--the bees are not dead, the dark woods are filled with music.

Genres: Poetry

96 pages, Paperback

First published May 30, 2006

About the author

Carol Frost is the author of Entwined: Three Lyric Sequences (Tupelo Press, 2014). She teaches at Rollins College in Florida and spends summers in upstate New York.

Reviews

[Zelda · Rating 2 out of 5]

I like the series of Apiary poems toward the beginning of the book very much, the bees fleeing the hive as a way to write about Alzheimer's and her mother's dementia were compelling, and for me, set up the false promise that this would be explored or touched on elsewhere in the collection. It wasn't. Lots of "nature" poems followed with which I was impatient. I guess because for me, they didn't seem to go anywhere. I'm hesitant to say all of this, since so often, it's where I am when I read something that determines what I get from it. Guess that goes without saying though...

[Diann Blakely]

Ten books! The brief description of THE QUEEN'S DESERTION gave me pause when all I have to offer here is the flimsiest--if long considered--descriptions: Frost is one of our few essential poets, and here readers will find metaphysical and beautifully articulated investigations of nature, human and otherwise.