The Queen of Wands

by Judy Grahn

Book by Grahn, Judy

Genres: Poetry

64 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 1982

Reviews

[Anthony · Rating 2 out of 5]

it would be hard for me to stand behind any of the individual poems in this collection, but there is something to be said for the world grahn creates in this book as a whole--one of queens and foes, helens and marilyns, spiders and wands--woven together out of disparate fragments of various mythologies. plus the cover art on the edition i checked out from the library totally rocks.

[Hannah · Rating 2 out of 5]

this was a super important book because it is my shadow lineage nightmare of what i could have become! extremely linguistically boring multiculti poetry of the white feminist persuasion. may my poetics never reflect such obliviously poor praxis. there were occasionally some poems that felt slightly more like creative risks that were better, but mostly it was like this:

“There was a nation here, once
and now there is another.
Business people pat each other’s pinstripes,
putting their own names on the ancient remedies and
products, systems and understandings. “Let’s design a rocket out of here. Don’t forget to
bring the queen of buffaloes. It gives me such
satisfaction knowing she is mine. Let’s pretend
that we are doing this for sex,
for money.”

like what the fuck even, amirite? yikes. if i am ever this obliviously boring, basic, whorephobic & colonial plz slap me.

[Sonnydee · Rating 3 out of 5]

When Grahn is on, she's on. But she's only on some of the time in this one.

[Kienan Aguado · Rating 2 out of 5]

Someone already said it... when she's good, she's good. But the good moments are few and far between.

[sjams · Rating 1 out of 5]

One pet peeve that I can't get over: people extracting more meaning from word etymology than is actually there. I've read too many awful Pagan books that claim extravagant things from the history of a word, as well as make huge claims about the history of "ancient" peoples, to not let this kind of thing bother me. So when this book started conflating a goddess of Ainu with Helen of Troy, it irked me and I couldn't bear it.

A housemate brought this book home for me from the library, seeing "poetry" and "Queen of Wands" i.e. Tarot imagery and (rightfully) deducing that it would be something I'd be very interested in. But it was just so not well done. Am I spoiled by Louise Gluck, whose books of poetry revolve around a theme really well? If you want to read a retelling of a Greek myth, try her Averno. Am I also spoiled by having recently read Margaret Atwood's The Penelopiad? Supposedly The Queen of Wands is based off of Helen of Troy's story. If you want a retelling from a women's perspective in that, read The Penelopiad. The Queen of Wands tried so hard to pull too many thematic elements together, that instead of exploring one compelling story (as in Averno, in which Glück explores the story of Persephone over and over, pulling out different bits every new poem), Grahn attempts to weave together many ideas that really don't simplify together. As a person who grew up on Louise Glück, it's disappointing.

But I'd really like to read a poetry book based off of Tarot imagery. For sure.

[Shari · Rating 5 out of 5]

Judy Grahn is my favorite poet, and this is my favorite collection.