Review by Booklist Review
In her first collection since Messenger: New and Selected Poems, 1976-2006 (2007), Voigt subtly explores the resonance of the word headwaters. The basic definition is the source of a stream, but for Voigt, headwaters also refers to a source of inspiration and the stream of consciousness from which poetry coalesces. Consequently, this is a fast-flowing book, its fluidity sustained by liquid cadences and an absence of punctuation. Reading Voigt's incisive poems of animals and nature at-large, childhood, marriage, and loss is like rafting through rapids to arrive at a deep, reflective pool; one feels alarmed and exhilarated. In Oak, a schoolgirl scuffing fall leaves walks through a small town to reach a dark room where someone too old for death awaits, and, with a simple, stunning gesture, turns dread into wonder. Voigt considers a sad hound, owl, fox, bear, and cow with the unflinching pragmatism she acquired on her family's Virginia farm. These tough, wryly funny, wise, and poignant lyrics erode sorrow and embrace adaptation ( all it took was a little enforced deprivation ) without denying beauty or love.--Seaman, Donna Copyright 2010 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Voigt's slim eighth collection of poetry is defined by a liquid precision. The poems, constructed of long lines and spontaneous rhymes, put Voigt's technical mastery of verse with no punctuation on full display. Her pieces open without capitalization as though she has burst in on each poem mid-thought: "end of the day daylight subsiding into the trees lights coming on/ in the milking barns." The simplicity of her titles is deceptive: poems called "Cow," "Mole," "Geese," "Privet Hedge," and "Bear" begin with these common animals and objects but glide into intimate and fearsome spaces. Voigt regards a chameleon, stating, "I see you do not move unless you need to eat you almost fool/ the mockingbird nearby in a live oak tree flinging out another's song/ which is me which which is me." In another poem titled "Noble Dog" she recalls the haunting experience of someone watching her daughter in the bathroom: "we thought when we bathed in the claw-footed tub we could pretend/ we stayed inside the natural world no shutters no shades at night" but after calling the police and tracking the stranger with a dog, "we knew this was a moment of consequence but we couldn't tell/ whether the world had grown larger or smaller" (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Celebrated poet and teacher Voigt (creative writing, Warren Wilson Coll.), a finalist for both the National Book Award (Shadow of Heaven; Messenger) and the Pulitzer Prize (Messenger), continues to use the natural world as thematic grounding in this long-awaited volume. In the title poem, the poet has "clung// to my own life raft I had room on it for only me...," but she includes multitudes-animals, entities, gathered and examined, sheltered and carried. This slim collection of 28 poems delivers what readers have come to expect from Voigt: luminous pieces meticulously shaped by provocative lines and careful syntax. Voigt chooses deceptively simple subjects-noble dogs and moles, larch and lament, the roof she finds praiseworthy, the owl, the cow, and stones a friend saved and of which she is now the owner. But her poems are far from simple. Each reading reveals the tug of opposites, and in this tension the poet shows her brilliance: "the emblem for wisdom is the same for gratitude at dusk at dark/ the farsighted owl strikes in utter silence when we hear it/ from the tree or the barn what it announces/ is already finished." VERDICT A highly recommended book by an important poet.-Karla Huston, Appleton, WI (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
