Divide These: Poems

by Saskia Hamilton

Poet Saskia Hamilton, author of As for Dream, explores "where the pull of reverie becomes palpable and eerily seductive" ( Poetry ). Only night First light
I will not quite
fit in this hole
nor you with
your long fingers
―from "Divide These" These spare, evocative poems register things at the edge of our attention that confound our systems of belief. In Divide These , Saskia Hamilton brings delicate observation together with riveting assertion to make an original, unsettling music.

Genres: Poetry

80 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 2005

Reviews

[Glenn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Saskia Hamilton's “Divide These” may seem at first inaccessible, even distant. But, upon re-reading--and there is plenty within even a cursory first reading of the poems in “Divide These” to impel a reader back to them--one begins to pick up the connections, the strands that make each poem so much more than the mere sum of its lines. There are the images that linger: the contrast of two birds in “Dusk,” the breathtaking dénouement of “One by Two.” Saskia Hamilton's poems force the reader to go deeper; to confront their easy grasping for determination, and to surrender to something more complicated; more dangerous.

She writes “No reason for order but order/persists.” And within these elusive and allusive poems, even though the poems sometimes seem to try to throw you off the scent, as she writes: “One abstraction/muscles into another, without a system” it becomes a way to ask more of the reader, to draw the reader in, until he or she is enveloped within the work, sees the sense and multifaceted meaning with these beautiful poems, that open and open and open.

[julie | eggmama]

The only reason I finished this is because it's so short. It made me feel absolutely nothing. Felt like the poet wanted to focus on spare, quiet moments that echo with meaning (like haiku-esque) but I wasn't seeing much meaning there lol. No interesting images or language. I think these types of poems are tough to pull off because so much is unsaid ... this was a huge bummer lol

[Laurie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm tempted to compare Hamilton here to Priscilla Becker. I'm not sure if either would appreciate or agree.

Hamilton's verse reminds me of the same gesture in Becker, where thoughts are not stunted exactly but left ambiguous, with the proper punctuation (oddly) intact.

Awesome use of the colon, too.

[Kristin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved these short, lovely and unlovely poems.

[Caleb Abel]

I'm not giving this zero stars. I'm giving it no rating because I don't think I'm qualified to rate it.

Laura and I read this because we found out about Saskia Hamilton from a song about her on Ben Folds and Nick Hornby's amazing album Lonely Avenue. It's been on my to-do list for 8 years.

Most of this is way over my head. I don't read much non-rhyming poetry and the way the lines are broken up is very confusing to me.

I had posted one of the poems in a Facebook group and someone took an hour to analyze it and actually provided a really good analysis that makes feel like there's way more here than I'm capable of following on my own. Before that I was probably going to give it one or two stars, but now that doesn't seem fair at all. Someone that's really into poetry would probably love this, but it wasn't very welcoming for a beginner at all and if it took someone who knows how to analyze poetry an hour to analyze, I just don't have that kind of time in the first place. The imagery is nice, but meaningless to me. I'd much rather read a well-written novel.

If you're just getting into poetry, this is not a great starting point unless you like jumping straight into the deep end on things.

Maybe I'll re-read it again someday and look up other people's analyses but I don't know if this is popular enough to find them for every poem in the book.