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Fault
Fear pervades this book, as the title, geologic catastrophe or its inevitable potential, suggests. Before and after. Carrying ancient Old Testament misogyny forward with inevitability into current headlines or hospitals, overlaying the man-made with the older natural violences of fire and flood, a human female life knits together with intelligence, inquiry, and an imagistic eye, a “standing place,” for us all. A place of dread. You should read it.
Linda McCarriston, author of Eva-Mary and Talking Soft Dutch
Scher’s Fault locates itself in “a zone of fractures along which movement has taken place.” The fractures she speaks of are rooted in the landscape as well as in the social, particularly in relation to the violences experienced by women. Scher’s field notes on these topics swarm and collide along these categorical divisions, exposing their raw edges and the wounds they’ve inflicted, and been inflicted with. Scher is a deeply affective witness, who turns her eye/I in every direction. These are powerful poems that sweep a reader away in their tremendous, flood-like movement.
Andrea Rexilius, author of New Organism: Essais (Letter Machine, 2014)
Wendy Scher’s keen perceptions measure the faultlines, especially, in human nature. She exposes our rawness, “pale pink like the nether side of skin/moments before blood ignites the surface.” The poems in Fault offer exquisitely sensitive witness to the dispossessed: “exile’s orphan.” Yet in their compassion (“Can such depletion ever feel full again?”), these poems also create a new means by which to orient ourselves, a gentle and heartening grace.
Elizabeth Robinson, author of On Ghosts
In Fault, Wendy Scher depicts a world both illumined and vulnerable. Her poems are peopled by strong women from the Hebrew Bible and the American West, as well as survivors. Her characters see the possibilities lurking at the corners of our field of vision, but they bear witness despite the emotional costs. The poet’s gaze takes in both cruelty made mundane and the lives of animals that seem surprisingly akin to our own. In chiseled language, Wendy Scher shows clear reasons to fear and to hope fiercely for the human spirit.
Zack Rogow, author, editor, or translator of twenty books or plays www.zackrogow.com
Linda McCarriston, author of Eva-Mary and Talking Soft Dutch
Scher’s Fault locates itself in “a zone of fractures along which movement has taken place.” The fractures she speaks of are rooted in the landscape as well as in the social, particularly in relation to the violences experienced by women. Scher’s field notes on these topics swarm and collide along these categorical divisions, exposing their raw edges and the wounds they’ve inflicted, and been inflicted with. Scher is a deeply affective witness, who turns her eye/I in every direction. These are powerful poems that sweep a reader away in their tremendous, flood-like movement.
Andrea Rexilius, author of New Organism: Essais (Letter Machine, 2014)
Wendy Scher’s keen perceptions measure the faultlines, especially, in human nature. She exposes our rawness, “pale pink like the nether side of skin/moments before blood ignites the surface.” The poems in Fault offer exquisitely sensitive witness to the dispossessed: “exile’s orphan.” Yet in their compassion (“Can such depletion ever feel full again?”), these poems also create a new means by which to orient ourselves, a gentle and heartening grace.
Elizabeth Robinson, author of On Ghosts
In Fault, Wendy Scher depicts a world both illumined and vulnerable. Her poems are peopled by strong women from the Hebrew Bible and the American West, as well as survivors. Her characters see the possibilities lurking at the corners of our field of vision, but they bear witness despite the emotional costs. The poet’s gaze takes in both cruelty made mundane and the lives of animals that seem surprisingly akin to our own. In chiseled language, Wendy Scher shows clear reasons to fear and to hope fiercely for the human spirit.
Zack Rogow, author, editor, or translator of twenty books or plays www.zackrogow.com
44 pages, Paperback
First published May 3, 2019
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
August 20, 2022
Looking forward to seeing more by this fine poet.
Advice for my Nephew on Getting his Driver’s Permit
Set your hands at 10 and 2
Grandpa once said to me, your mother,
your cousins and he’ll say to you.
He’ll tell you to buckle up, adjust your
seat, your mirrors, and the two-second rule
for estimating the distance between
you and the car in front of you.
Then round and round you’ll cruise an empty
parking lot with Grandpa braced
between the dash and seat, smiling.
But his is a white man and may neglect to add:
Keep your palms flat against the wheel
when the police stop you for a broken light
and never reach for your wallet.
Wendy Mannis Scher
Advice for my Nephew on Getting his Driver’s Permit
Set your hands at 10 and 2
Grandpa once said to me, your mother,
your cousins and he’ll say to you.
He’ll tell you to buckle up, adjust your
seat, your mirrors, and the two-second rule
for estimating the distance between
you and the car in front of you.
Then round and round you’ll cruise an empty
parking lot with Grandpa braced
between the dash and seat, smiling.
But his is a white man and may neglect to add:
Keep your palms flat against the wheel
when the police stop you for a broken light
and never reach for your wallet.
Wendy Mannis Scher
Displaying 1 of 1 review