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Baiting the Void
A sensual, lyrical journey into modern day mythos.
- GenresPoetry
104 pages, Paperback
First published September 30, 2005
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
November 25, 2024
Penelope's books/poems are always so much fun, even when the topic/theme is brutal. This is because of her language play and her easy mix of the surreal with the everyday. Her descriptions never fail to both delight and impress me.
There are a lot of nature poems in this collection, but Penelope creates a natural world that informs, mirrors, and stuns the humans in her world. "My Box Turtle," for example, begins When I found you, I was younger/and prone to grief. "The Nature of Clouds" starts with the line: There is a cloud on my house. And in the second section of the poem, "Premeditations," we are told: There are ten basic designs for leaves.
All of those lines delight me! Highly recommend!
There are a lot of nature poems in this collection, but Penelope creates a natural world that informs, mirrors, and stuns the humans in her world. "My Box Turtle," for example, begins When I found you, I was younger/and prone to grief. "The Nature of Clouds" starts with the line: There is a cloud on my house. And in the second section of the poem, "Premeditations," we are told: There are ten basic designs for leaves.
All of those lines delight me! Highly recommend!
April 4, 2010
The title, Baiting the Void, is also the last words in the poem "Les Neigres d'antan," and this captures the many moods that run through this amazing book. The poem "Les Neigres d'antan" is after the French poet Francois Villon whose line, "Where are the snows of yesteryear? is one of the most famous lines of translated secular poetry in the English-speaking world." (this from Wikipedia) Penelope takes his line and changes snow to mice, in one of the couplets she states, "What courage it takes us/to make anything of nothing"
She has blurbs from Judith Barrington, Ravi Shankar, Maria Mazziotti Gillan, & Peter Sears. Called painterly poems. Called a virtuoso performance of the lyric self. Called eerie & resonate. Called out as having scrupulous honesty about the human condition. Indeed, all these things. This book that won the Orphic Prize for poetry in 2004. Penelope's later book "A is for Anne" won the Oregon State Book Award in 2008. She is a poet to put on your radar and read.
In the poem "The Birds of Sorrow," "Stand too long in tall grass,/and they will build their nests/in your uncombed hair./With small twigs,//they will pick, pick at your scalp until/they unweave your cap of misgivinngs". All human emotions are layered in these pages, loss of a father, loss of a mother, loss of children, our own coming death, the starving heron that is disconsolate. The poem that brings me to tears is the one where the woman is asked by her husband why she cares for the elderly. "Why I tend the elderly:/So someone will love me/when I am old.//What I tell you in bed:/Nothing. Only my legs/talk to yours. They beg."
Yet, within this despair she brings us stalwart women. This book is layered with wisdom carefully crafted through literary tradition, using exquisite observations from the natural world.
The opening poem "Intriot" is the Latin word for entrance and the fragment of a psalm for the entry of ministers approaching the altar.
This richly crafted book is a book that offers light. Her poem titles emphasize survival & draw me into the underlying meaning: The Necessity of Lemons, Fear as a White Path, I never think about my abortion except when I visit a new gynecologist, Two Days in a Seedy Airport Motel.
Read this book full of wisdom. Savor it.
She has blurbs from Judith Barrington, Ravi Shankar, Maria Mazziotti Gillan, & Peter Sears. Called painterly poems. Called a virtuoso performance of the lyric self. Called eerie & resonate. Called out as having scrupulous honesty about the human condition. Indeed, all these things. This book that won the Orphic Prize for poetry in 2004. Penelope's later book "A is for Anne" won the Oregon State Book Award in 2008. She is a poet to put on your radar and read.
In the poem "The Birds of Sorrow," "Stand too long in tall grass,/and they will build their nests/in your uncombed hair./With small twigs,//they will pick, pick at your scalp until/they unweave your cap of misgivinngs". All human emotions are layered in these pages, loss of a father, loss of a mother, loss of children, our own coming death, the starving heron that is disconsolate. The poem that brings me to tears is the one where the woman is asked by her husband why she cares for the elderly. "Why I tend the elderly:/So someone will love me/when I am old.//What I tell you in bed:/Nothing. Only my legs/talk to yours. They beg."
Yet, within this despair she brings us stalwart women. This book is layered with wisdom carefully crafted through literary tradition, using exquisite observations from the natural world.
The opening poem "Intriot" is the Latin word for entrance and the fragment of a psalm for the entry of ministers approaching the altar.
This richly crafted book is a book that offers light. Her poem titles emphasize survival & draw me into the underlying meaning: The Necessity of Lemons, Fear as a White Path, I never think about my abortion except when I visit a new gynecologist, Two Days in a Seedy Airport Motel.
Read this book full of wisdom. Savor it.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews