I'm delighted that one of my birthmother's catechisms is The Guardian's "Poem of the Week," selected by Carol Rumens, yet perhaps more moved by Rumens' overall account of the book, wonderfully appreciative and astute. Describing the Imagined Sons prose poems, she writes, "Funny at times, fast-moving and psychologically astute, these tiny
monologues are held together by a narrative voice as seemingly
self-possessed as it is candid." Of the catechisms, she says, "Etter reinterprets the form as both a psychological and a melodic
device. The intense, same-question repetition pushes the speaker into a
corner, where poetic self-defence may be disarmed, the creative play of
the prose poems distilled to a barer essence." Concluding with her analysis of the catechism that asks, "Who do you think you are?," Rumens comments on the last line, "It's a cadence of renunciation, singular and resonant, in a text
otherwise charged with restless energy and novelistic powers of
invention."
Heartening and gratifying....
Heartening and gratifying....
Well done, it's an excellent collection. I loved it and could well relate to it.
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