First collection of poems by Canadian writer Susan Goyette, The True Names of Birds , from Brick Press, 1998. Pristine copy available for price of shipping, $2. Otherwise, you can purchase the book here . The poems of this collection about a recent widow turn daily domesticity into prayers to keep a family safe, or to bring it back. Moments of heartbreak circumvented, but made obvious by their outline. Moments of grace carefully and lovingly detailed and cherished in the face of loss. Goyette's poems tend toward shapeliness, often displaying very even stanzas of free verse. Sweeping statements pop up in inverted narratives and series of surreal logic. Well within the tradition of women's poetry that invokes witchiness and examines family dynamics, The True Names of Birds is at times fairy tale-ish, and involves a good deal of garden and herb imagery. From "On the Road Crossing the Island," "...This road has filled my shoes with birthstones and turned my mother in...
Feminism, poetry, poetics.