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novelesque_life's review
3.0
SHALER'S FISH
Written by Helen Macdonald
2001 (reissue: February 2016); 62 Pages
Genre: poetry
★★★
(I received an ARC from the NETGALLEY in exchange for an honest review.)
With the success of Helen Macdonald's H is for Hawk, her 2001 poetry collection has been reissued. Unfortunately, I did not really feel anything for the poems. I think it is her style that turns me off a bit. I found myself skipping about a quarter of them. I am still looking forward to reading H is for Hawk.
Written by Helen Macdonald
2001 (reissue: February 2016); 62 Pages
Genre: poetry
★★★
(I received an ARC from the NETGALLEY in exchange for an honest review.)
With the success of Helen Macdonald's H is for Hawk, her 2001 poetry collection has been reissued. Unfortunately, I did not really feel anything for the poems. I think it is her style that turns me off a bit. I found myself skipping about a quarter of them. I am still looking forward to reading H is for Hawk.
paulgodfread's review against another edition
2.0
Loved H is for Hawk. Went to see Helen MacDonald when she came to town. Bought Shaler's Fish and got it autographed. But, I just didn't get into this.
schudwitz's review against another edition
1.0
Gearing such good things about 'H is for Hawk', I refused to give up on this title. Poetry is something you really can't critique, but this book was just so difficult to get through. I went into it with high expectations, but after struggling to understand anything she was saying, I was disappointed. Too many "big words" were used, and not enough punctuation or line breaks. The old-timey language was not an issue, but rather how she went about it. Nothing stuck out for me; most of the time I found myself getting droopy eyes. Had I grabbed this book off the shelves (I received an advance reading copy courtesy of the publisher), I would have read the first page and put it back.
cgcpoems's review against another edition
marking this as DNF. just not my style of poetry, & was giving me more of a headache than it was worth.
thiefofcamorr's review against another edition
5.0
Helen Macdonald is best known as the author of H is for Hawk, which won the 2014 Samuel Johnson Prize and Costa Book Award. Previous to this, Helen published poetry and worked as an Affiliated Research Scholar at the University of Cambridge Department of History and Philosophy of Science.
In this collection of 42 poems we see the lyrical writing we loved in H is for Hawk put to perfect use for its ability to be read aloud and shared, for the beautiful beat the poems are set to, and the musical phrasing.
Helen beautifully shows the reader/listener the way she sees the world around her, capturing elements of nature that few go near these days, and even if they do, they're not often able to experience the land as Helen has.
These poems capture the call of a wren in full song, death in both nature and creativity, falling and flying, and deep things surely over my head yet remain beautiful to read.
From "the new world":
What is a hand for, but to be held? It is raining
in Georgia it is raining all over the world [. . .]
every moment describes some other music
and I cannot remember banality ever existing.
The wonderful thing with poetry is how they can be read again and again, always finding new meaning as your life progresses, giving you new interpretations of things around you. If only in school we’d had poetry like this to study, rather than the dull and dreary things we slogged through instead.
Highly recommended.
In this collection of 42 poems we see the lyrical writing we loved in H is for Hawk put to perfect use for its ability to be read aloud and shared, for the beautiful beat the poems are set to, and the musical phrasing.
Helen beautifully shows the reader/listener the way she sees the world around her, capturing elements of nature that few go near these days, and even if they do, they're not often able to experience the land as Helen has.
These poems capture the call of a wren in full song, death in both nature and creativity, falling and flying, and deep things surely over my head yet remain beautiful to read.
From "the new world":
What is a hand for, but to be held? It is raining
in Georgia it is raining all over the world [. . .]
every moment describes some other music
and I cannot remember banality ever existing.
The wonderful thing with poetry is how they can be read again and again, always finding new meaning as your life progresses, giving you new interpretations of things around you. If only in school we’d had poetry like this to study, rather than the dull and dreary things we slogged through instead.
Highly recommended.
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