THE GODDESS OF THE HUNT IS NOT HERSELF

by Sam White

Poetry. White, in his debut, reintroduces the Romantic sensibility, as well as extra-quiet meditation, into an American poetic era sorely lacking these qualities. "I am often close. // I am often a boy / absent the island." "The GODDESS OF THE HUNT IS NOT HERSELF is a thrilling love-and-guts battle between the so-called natural world and the belligerent fact of Sam White's imagination. The outcome is these beautiful troubling poems, and if they sometimes leave the world, they leave it a more terrifying and habitable place. A kiss may win out in the end, but language will never be safe again" - Peter Richards.

Genres: Poetry

53 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 2005

About the author

Librarian Note: There are more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Others:
Sam 4^ White: GR author, history

Reviews

[Amy]

Arresting language...Sam White offers a lot of birds, sand, and other landscapes, but in a spare and elliptical way.

There is beauty, mystery, & humor in these poems. I think my favorite title was "What Fish Brain Thought", and that poem begins: "Fish brain conjures flakes, skies..."

Lovely moments:

"Part of me lives in a crow's beak./Part of me is nest."

"These beds/have strange compartments.//I've woken in the afternoon sun/feeling perfectly make-believe."

"...What do you have/beside your masterful wit?/I have a pony, and a switch."

"How this must feel. Westward runs/the wind, the bus, the cardboard ocean,/in beautiful heretofore,/in beautiful sand."

[Kent]

The poems just seem overtorqued to me, which to me means that there were plenty of times in a poem when I feel that the poet has taken one step too far. Compare the poem "Creation Myth" with "Oath." The first poem pushes its images and makes me see this very common idea new. (Continents with a million years shrug!) But the oath, which I'm interested in as a lyric gets muddled (a pulse in fumes?). The new, snap tension is great until it is too tense.

[Joe]

It's dusk. It's not dusk./It's many blackened fountains.