Placebo Effects

by Jeanne Marie Beaumont

Winner of the l996 National Poetry Series, judged and selected by William Matthews. "This collection of beguiling poems . . . takes as its avenue into experience the palpable, quotidian objects of the intimate environment. A barometer, an arrangement of flowers, a vase, a carpet, a pyramid of oranges in a city marketplace are seen and then entered as one might enter the action of a film. . . . There is something of the child's wondrous way of seeing the world that electrifies." ― Boston Globe "Jeanne Beaumont's poems are smart and full of feeling, heartbreakingly in love with the snares and clarities of the language she writes in, and lit throughout by a kind of wry wonder." ― William Matthews   "How rare to discover so sly and disarming, so luminous and compelling a debut." ― David St. John

Genres: Poetry

98 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 1997

About the author

Jeanne Marie Beaumont grew up in the Philadelphia suburbs. She is the author of three previous collections of poetry: Burning of the Three Fires, Curious Conduct, and Placebo Effects, a winner in the National Poetry Series. She coedited The Poets’ Grimm: 20th Century Poems from Grimm Fairy Tales. She has taught at The Frost Place, Rutgers University, The Unterberg Poetry Center of the 92nd Street Y, and is on the poetry faculty of the Stonecoast MFA Program at the University of Southern Maine. Since 1983 she has made her home in Manhattan.

Reviews

[Peycho Kanev · Rating 3 out of 5]

She Speaks from Experience

Felt like I
was a word being
erased. Itched every which
way, brushed
aside, blown off.

Later, I turned
calm & blank or
never blank again.
A disinterested third party
who witnessed second thoughts.

The word love
can be erased
just as the words
suitcase or serene or
is there a difference?

In this book
were many such words,
a whole spectral language
to be reformulated.
Old rubbings.

But the rubber-tongued
could never utter them
without further diminishment
although they twisted with pleasure
& their intentions were pure.

[Rachel · Rating 2 out of 5]

The wordplay didn't feel clever and the subject matter didn't feel unique or inspiring (I say "inspiring" in a creative sense, not in a spiritual sense, though I suppose one often begets the other). There were a few lines here and there worth rereading but for the most part I found this collection unremarkable. Also, there's no nice way to say it: the cover is awful.

[David Hartzheim · Rating 5 out of 5]

How grand it is to be washed in the joy and pathos of language.

"Symmetrical as a valentine
or the shoulders
of an attentive stance, a shape seen

against a wall, against a bright
window, against against.
What is so right in its lines"

Beaumont deserves more recognition. Enough said.

[Molly · Rating 3 out of 5]

Book 4 of Poetry Book a Day in May 2015.

This book was recommended to me, but now I'm not sure why. As individual poems, I was interested, but the collection didn't carry me between poems as much as I would have liked.