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stephbookshine's review against another edition
5.0
*I received a free ebook of this collection, with thanks to the author, Isabelle Kenyon and Animal Heart Press. The decision to review and my opinions are my own.
Morning Walk… is a collection of magical-realism prose-poetry, covering themes of loneliness, grief, loss and pain.
Beth Gordon twists and bends the words together to create a stream-of-consciousness of raw emotion and unique imagery, that reads like it is written in an entirely new language in places.
Each poem features this same act processing of pain through wordplay and linguistic exploration. The tears and screams are vivid on the page, but also the day-to-day act of learning to live with pain, and eventually find beauty even despite it.
And despite the unhappy subject matter, the poems don’t wallow in grief and despair. Instead the emotions are exposed, like nerve endings, then allowed to air under gentle care, with the hope of future healing implicit. The effect on the reader is a cathartic release of negative feelings and a clean, refreshed emergence on the other side.
I would definitely recommend this collection for anyone who loves poetry that is deeply emotive and extraordinarily linguistically creative.
You loved me as sword grass, ungreen and venomous,
my new edges drawing scar, you loved me as heron, long-legged
and coastal, as catastrophic forest
fire, blackened limbs and skin as translucent
as winter leaves, full dead and metamorphic, my awful knees locking between
your ribs without a single rattle or cicada song.
– Beth Gordon, ‘Igneous’ in Morning Walk with Dead Possum, Breakfast and Parallel Universe
Review by Steph Warren of Bookshine and Readbows blog
https://bookshineandreadbows.wordpress.com/2019/12/04/morning-walk-beth-gordon/
Morning Walk… is a collection of magical-realism prose-poetry, covering themes of loneliness, grief, loss and pain.
Beth Gordon twists and bends the words together to create a stream-of-consciousness of raw emotion and unique imagery, that reads like it is written in an entirely new language in places.
Each poem features this same act processing of pain through wordplay and linguistic exploration. The tears and screams are vivid on the page, but also the day-to-day act of learning to live with pain, and eventually find beauty even despite it.
And despite the unhappy subject matter, the poems don’t wallow in grief and despair. Instead the emotions are exposed, like nerve endings, then allowed to air under gentle care, with the hope of future healing implicit. The effect on the reader is a cathartic release of negative feelings and a clean, refreshed emergence on the other side.
I would definitely recommend this collection for anyone who loves poetry that is deeply emotive and extraordinarily linguistically creative.
You loved me as sword grass, ungreen and venomous,
my new edges drawing scar, you loved me as heron, long-legged
and coastal, as catastrophic forest
fire, blackened limbs and skin as translucent
as winter leaves, full dead and metamorphic, my awful knees locking between
your ribs without a single rattle or cicada song.
– Beth Gordon, ‘Igneous’ in Morning Walk with Dead Possum, Breakfast and Parallel Universe
Review by Steph Warren of Bookshine and Readbows blog
https://bookshineandreadbows.wordpress.com/2019/12/04/morning-walk-beth-gordon/
stephbookshine's review
5.0
*I received a free ebook of this collection, with thanks to the author, Isabelle Kenyon and Animal Heart Press. The decision to review and my opinions are my own.
Morning Walk… is a collection of magical-realism prose-poetry, covering themes of loneliness, grief, loss and pain.
Beth Gordon twists and bends the words together to create a stream-of-consciousness of raw emotion and unique imagery, that reads like it is written in an entirely new language in places.
Each poem features this same act processing of pain through wordplay and linguistic exploration. The tears and screams are vivid on the page, but also the day-to-day act of learning to live with pain, and eventually find beauty even despite it.
And despite the unhappy subject matter, the poems don’t wallow in grief and despair. Instead the emotions are exposed, like nerve endings, then allowed to air under gentle care, with the hope of future healing implicit. The effect on the reader is a cathartic release of negative feelings and a clean, refreshed emergence on the other side.
I would definitely recommend this collection for anyone who loves poetry that is deeply emotive and extraordinarily linguistically creative.
You loved me as sword grass, ungreen and venomous,
my new edges drawing scar, you loved me as heron, long-legged
and coastal, as catastrophic forest
fire, blackened limbs and skin as translucent
as winter leaves, full dead and metamorphic, my awful knees locking between
your ribs without a single rattle or cicada song.
– Beth Gordon, ‘Igneous’ in Morning Walk with Dead Possum, Breakfast and Parallel Universe
Review by Steph Warren of Bookshine and Readbows blog
https://bookshineandreadbows.wordpress.com/2019/12/04/morning-walk-beth-gordon/
Morning Walk… is a collection of magical-realism prose-poetry, covering themes of loneliness, grief, loss and pain.
Beth Gordon twists and bends the words together to create a stream-of-consciousness of raw emotion and unique imagery, that reads like it is written in an entirely new language in places.
Each poem features this same act processing of pain through wordplay and linguistic exploration. The tears and screams are vivid on the page, but also the day-to-day act of learning to live with pain, and eventually find beauty even despite it.
And despite the unhappy subject matter, the poems don’t wallow in grief and despair. Instead the emotions are exposed, like nerve endings, then allowed to air under gentle care, with the hope of future healing implicit. The effect on the reader is a cathartic release of negative feelings and a clean, refreshed emergence on the other side.
I would definitely recommend this collection for anyone who loves poetry that is deeply emotive and extraordinarily linguistically creative.
You loved me as sword grass, ungreen and venomous,
my new edges drawing scar, you loved me as heron, long-legged
and coastal, as catastrophic forest
fire, blackened limbs and skin as translucent
as winter leaves, full dead and metamorphic, my awful knees locking between
your ribs without a single rattle or cicada song.
– Beth Gordon, ‘Igneous’ in Morning Walk with Dead Possum, Breakfast and Parallel Universe
Review by Steph Warren of Bookshine and Readbows blog
https://bookshineandreadbows.wordpress.com/2019/12/04/morning-walk-beth-gordon/
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