Post by moira on May 16, 2008 20:37:33 GMT 2
Here from Away
Kate Bernadette Benedict[/b]
Précis
“From away” is how the hard-bitten people of Maine traditionally refer to those who settle there from other states, a chilly phrase and a designation not easily overcome. For me, it’s always been a resonant phrase. Aren't we all “here from away,” born onto an inclement planet, welcome or unwelcome, confronted with the lifelong work of surviving and fitting in? It’s the human condition. The title poem of this collection explores this idea directly; the other poems explore it more obliquely, with poems of dislocation and close observance.
Sample poem:
We Are Refugees
In groups of two or three, we steal through breaches in the mountains.
In throngs, we shamble over trance-inducing sands.
We left our city to the interlopers, with their new weaponry.
We left our village to feral cats and the few dying elders.
We carry dry foodstuffs in woven cloths, and motionless infants.
The Holy Book we left behind, with our intricate carpets.
By this walking we know we live. Do our bowed heads still venerate?
We cannot say; nor do we speak of bleeding or any particular lack.
A little water may flow out of rock; we chance upon a small oasis.
To extinguish a morning’s thirst, to move on: it is enough.
There is nothing to want anymore, nothing to expect.
Nevertheless, a child is delivered, ululating in the reeds.
At night, when you fly over, count the holy prayer beads of our fires.
By day, with your instruments, note the many colors of our robes.
We hear from all directions sounds of strafing and detonation.
Is there no place left where we came from, then? None where we are going?
Reviews for Here from Away:
“For Benedict, poetry is less a career or a profession than a devotional exercise, a means of enhancing life—its thrills, absurdities and inevitable heartbreak—by memorializing it in the way that only poetry’s calibration of language can. . . Here From Away demonstrates nicely that the poetry in your life can be as near as the person sitting across the table from you.
—Frank Wilson, The Philadelphia Inquirer (Editor’s Choice, 19 February 2006)
“I admire Kate Benedict’s poems for their freshness, intelligence, and grace… her nimbleness in meter informs the music of her free verse.”
—A. E. Stallings
“ A multi-varied talent shows through in both formal and free verse, but it is her rich approach to both language and life that makes these poems so engaging.”
—Sandy McKinney, The Alsop Review
About the author:
Kate Bernadette Benedict grew up in the Bronx, New York. Since the late 1970’s, she has lived with her husband John Leahy on New York City’s upper west side in a “cozy” apartment filled with totemic objects and thrift-store treasures. Her poems have been appearing in literary magazines and anthologies since 1980. She has moderated both the nonmetrical and metrical threads at Eratosphere, the on-line poetry forum, and edits Umbrella, a Journal of Poetry and Kindred Prose.
ISBN-13: 9781932339253, 133 pages, $16.00
CustomWords, 2003
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