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Late
Late is driven by the alternating energies of prose poems and free verse. Woloch understands a person’s true -relationships with family, friends, and lovers arrive late—if at all. The exquisite pathos in these poems disclose Woloch’s abiding empathy for family, children, ex-lovers, and strangers. Born in Pittsburgh in 1956, Cecilia Woloch grew up in Pittsburgh and in Kentucky. She earned degrees in English and Theatre Arts from Transylvania University. Woloch has been active as a poet in the schools and teacher of creative writing workshops. She has received poetry prizes from The Wildwood Journal , Literal Latte , and the Kentucky Arts Council. She lives in Atlanta, Georgia.
- GenresPoetry
96 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 2003
About the author
Cecilia Woloch
15 books24 followersCecilia Woloch is the author of five collections of poems, most recently Carpathia, from BOA Editions Ltd. She is the recipient of an NEA Fellowship and is currently a lecturer in the creative writing program at the University of Southern California, as well as the founding director of The Paris Poetry Workshop. She spends a part of each year traveling, and in recent years has divided her time between Los Angeles, California; Atlanta, Georgia; Shepherdsville, Kentucky; Paris, France; and a small village in the Carpathian mountains of southeastern Poland.
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
August 25, 2017
Cecilia Woloch's collection, Late, examines the grief, frustration, and consuming nature of familial and romantic love. There is a longing and ache here, first introduced in the opening poem, "Aubade": "Oh brilliance of being a beautiful thing in a world full of beautiful things. In which even suffering shimmers and means," and a resignation in "Oh world, hold us up to this light. There is so much to lose that we haven't lost" (15).
Persona poems, like "Hades," fuse myth with experience when Persephone calls to her mother, "Mother, I'll never wake up from him, / I have already traveled too far. / My mouth is the color of his mouth / and his arms are no longer his arms" (17). Already she is negotiating a separation from the mother and a dark and all-consuming love. This is a grief, she seems to suggest, that is hereditary, and she addresses the mother for empathy. This becomes evident in the subsequent poem, "My Mother's Birds," a retelling of the first time the speaker's mother knew grief after her mother's parents killed their daughter's pet chickens for meat (26).
These "ghosts of birds" (18) are not the only ghosts here. Ghosts haunt these pages: familial ghosts (27, 29,31), ghosts of lovers (38, 59), ghost trees (30), and even ghosts of writers past, such as in my favorite poem of the collection, "Nocturne," in which Woloch invokes the poet, H.D.: "When I was that child I believed in trees / as leafy ghosts, and in holy birds; / and I believed in the dark earth turning / at our backs, the wheel of the sky. / I was afraid of this world, even then, / but I loved it, too, as I loved him. / What is the source of such music, H.D.? / Where do we go when we die, when we sleep? / You, who have reached out to me like a branch, / like the pale arm of god, / you must know why we sing" (30).
Birds are both "holy" (30) and devastating for Woloch as she tries to navigate the desire to fly from her grief. There are birds fluttering throughout the collection--at times delicately, at times violently--as she longs for a sky she is unable to access: "Here is a sky that screams back at me as I rush toward it, darkening" (49) and "I shut that black wing from my heart. That bad, bad bird. I slam the light" (55). It is as if she blames the birds for their flight because she is unable to fly. She covets their wings. Of a lover, she offers, "In sleep, he likes to touch the wing bone of my shoulder with his breath" (66) as if the ghost of a wing is asleep in her body.
These poems are not completely without hope, however. The closing and titular poem suggests that there is someone late walking into her life who will lift her away from this sorrow. The poem (and collection) closes with, "And you lifted me over the wall of the garden and carried me back to my life" (70), a closing given power in its suggestion that, through the right love at the right time, even the wingless can know what it is to fly.
Persona poems, like "Hades," fuse myth with experience when Persephone calls to her mother, "Mother, I'll never wake up from him, / I have already traveled too far. / My mouth is the color of his mouth / and his arms are no longer his arms" (17). Already she is negotiating a separation from the mother and a dark and all-consuming love. This is a grief, she seems to suggest, that is hereditary, and she addresses the mother for empathy. This becomes evident in the subsequent poem, "My Mother's Birds," a retelling of the first time the speaker's mother knew grief after her mother's parents killed their daughter's pet chickens for meat (26).
These "ghosts of birds" (18) are not the only ghosts here. Ghosts haunt these pages: familial ghosts (27, 29,31), ghosts of lovers (38, 59), ghost trees (30), and even ghosts of writers past, such as in my favorite poem of the collection, "Nocturne," in which Woloch invokes the poet, H.D.: "When I was that child I believed in trees / as leafy ghosts, and in holy birds; / and I believed in the dark earth turning / at our backs, the wheel of the sky. / I was afraid of this world, even then, / but I loved it, too, as I loved him. / What is the source of such music, H.D.? / Where do we go when we die, when we sleep? / You, who have reached out to me like a branch, / like the pale arm of god, / you must know why we sing" (30).
Birds are both "holy" (30) and devastating for Woloch as she tries to navigate the desire to fly from her grief. There are birds fluttering throughout the collection--at times delicately, at times violently--as she longs for a sky she is unable to access: "Here is a sky that screams back at me as I rush toward it, darkening" (49) and "I shut that black wing from my heart. That bad, bad bird. I slam the light" (55). It is as if she blames the birds for their flight because she is unable to fly. She covets their wings. Of a lover, she offers, "In sleep, he likes to touch the wing bone of my shoulder with his breath" (66) as if the ghost of a wing is asleep in her body.
These poems are not completely without hope, however. The closing and titular poem suggests that there is someone late walking into her life who will lift her away from this sorrow. The poem (and collection) closes with, "And you lifted me over the wall of the garden and carried me back to my life" (70), a closing given power in its suggestion that, through the right love at the right time, even the wingless can know what it is to fly.
November 11, 2008
Late. Late to love, to committment, to Faith(the title of my favorite poem here is "On Faith"). But it's never, ever too late, this lovely poet seems to tell us.
I've read this nine times.
I've read this nine times.
July 13, 2012
Wonderful. Prior to the publication of Cecilia's "Carpathia" this was was my favorite book of poetry.
June 18, 2020
Some of this felt like “you had to be there” type of situations. Almost too coded. I don’t like giving 4 stars for such strong writer, though, so 5 stars it is. Also, some of those paragraphs were just gorgeous.
March 10, 2023
I love this book of poetry like best one I’ve ever read. The themes of grief, regret, and love are all extremely moving. The images and motifs continued throughout the poems are some of the most compelling I’ve read. The last poem actually broke my heart. Will be reading this book again
April 19, 2014
Excellent. I didn't have exactly high expectations for this one, because I was totally unfamiliar with the author. But it's great. A series of poems about loss, grief, art and other common elements of the Poetic Life. Cecilia Woloch is a terrific writer, who, though she has chosen deep and difficult topics, puts her poems together with the clear and simple language of the every day. This collection is completely absorbing.
June 25, 2012
Pretty sure this is my favorite book of hers, and I've read them all ;) Currently rereading the latest, Carpathia... Can't say more on Late until I get back to my Paris library. Sorry. But you should read it if you can get your hands on a copy.
November 18, 2008
gorgeous, brave, large-spirited poems
Want to Read
January 9, 2009see writiers almanac 12/30/08. poem Proposals.
May 3, 2011
Every time I reread this I come back and bump it up a star. Expect it to be at five before 2013.
August 2, 2011
fantastic
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July 28, 2017811.6 W866L 2003
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews