Post by shayepoet on Nov 10, 2008 1:12:42 GMT 2
interstices
Laurelyn Whitt[/b]
Boundary-drawing, like boundary-crossing, is a process riddled with subtleties, ambiguities and hesitancies. Boundaries and borders also tend to be dangerous places, where a great deal is at stake, where much can be lost, and where power - in its many forms - is a significant factor. The poems in interstices acknowledge all of this, respect it, but also resist it.
Sample poem:
An Amphibian
double-lived
intermediary
never wholly
one, and not
entirely the
other, it is
what remains
in the space
between gill
& lung, fish
& reptile: a
dual-habited
evolutionary
gamble still
unfolding in
the boundary
world, where
two elements
touch, alter
one another.
Thaw
"They believe they are so powerful they
have killed things that existed since
time began." - Myra Laramie
There is a land where
all that is spoken
freezes.
So cold that words
can be seen hanging
in the air like a
scent. They pile up
in great drifts
& turn glacial
growing taut as
a sheet of ice,
stretching like
memory from one
generation to another.
Old people still tell of it:
the land where
languages go
when they are driven
from their people.
How they endure until spring
& the surging fluency
of meltwaters when
what has been said
will be heard,
will be heard again
in a single, rushing moment.
* Prior to 1492, some 2000 different languages were spoken in the Americas.
Raves and reviews for interstices:
"I'm reading Laurelyn Whitt's beautiful new book in the light of the setting sun. A breeze thinks itself into desultory existence. A plume of smoke drifts over Utah Lake from a fire in Goshen. I decide to listen to some jazz while I read. But when I reach for a CD that feels wrong. The poetry is its own music; and the cricket-structured gathering twilight is perfect for these delicate poems about borderlands, interstices, ecotones, ambiguous creatures, immigrants hopeful and uneasy, displaced natives, uprooted languages, lost and remembered companions. ...
... When the night finally falls and I can no longer read, I listen to a recording Whitt made of the poems, a response to the request of a sculptor sharing a residency in Maine. The voice is soft, precise, unassuming, powerful and personal. Intimate."
-- Scott Abbot, Catalyst
"Reading Interstices produces a sense of meditation and concern about the "gray areas" in life and culture. The poems deal with the black holes that thinkers peer into, the ethical twilights that confuse human beings, and the cracks that real people fall through in contemporary society The book deserves a careful reading. Indeed, it may need two readings to fully appreciate its depth. ... The collection consists of three sections of relatively short, vertical poems surrounded by conspicuous white space. Deceptively simple, the poems proceed with restraint and elegance as they grapple with the ambiguity of borderlines, boundaries and indeterminacy."
-- Elinor Benedict, Mid-American Review
About the author:
Laurelyn Whitt's poems have appeared in various journals in Canada and the United States, including The Tampa Review, Puerto Del Sol, The Spoon River Poetry Review, The Malahat Review, PRISM International and The Fiddlehead. Her first book of poetry, Interstices, won the Holland Prize and was published by Logan House Press in 2006. Two chapbooks of her poetry have been published: Words For Relocation (Will Hall Press, Winner of the 2000 Norma O. Harrison Chapbook Competition), and a long dream of difference (Frith Press, Second Place in the 2000 Open Poetry Chapbook Competition). She has a Ph.D. in Philosophy of Science from the University of Western Ontario, is a Professor of Philosophy and Professor of Integrated Studies at Utah Valley University, and lives in the Rocky Mountains near Spanish Fork, Utah.
ISBN-10: 0976993503
ISBN-13: 978-0976993506, 89 pages, $12.00
Logan House Press, Winside, Nebraska: 2006
Holland Prize Winner
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LHP: www.loganhousepress.com/
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