Beautiful and powerful verses about the lives of women on American farms.
Priddy offers a debut volume of anti-pastoral poetry.
As fellow poet Rebecca Gayle Howell reminds readers in this collection’s foreword, “Pastoral literature is an idealized imaginary” that generally features a lone male farmer in a gorgeous, romantic, and ineffable environment. But who’s killing the chickens, cleaning out the manure from the stalls, milking the cows, and more? Many agrarian narratives neglect the fact that “a woman, a wife, a daughter, a team of daughters, a mother, a grandmother” do this vital work. Kentuckian Priddy grew up as a third-generation farmworker, and she synthesizes her firsthand experience with vivid imagery and metaphor in these verses, shattering antiquated myths about country life along the way. In “Pastoral: Sunup to Sundown, Year ’Round,” the speaker experiences “summer’s fury,” and in “What August Work Does to the Body,” a narrator tells of how one labors in such heat with “Quart jars of cold water / downed by thirsty radiators and humans, alike.” Revelations of casual misogyny permeate accounts of how the farm is regulated, with a father obeyed like a cruel deity over his “forever farmland— / with daughters paid lower wages than sons” (“You Did Not Teach Us Everything We Know”) and where a patriarch affirms that “Cows are just like women.” (“Before the First Milking”). Priddy effectively upends expectations by furthering this comparison; even though many people believe that “cows are easily bent to domestic life” (“Call Me Cow Face If You Wish”), she writes of numerous examples of bovine creatures being rebellious, defiant, and independent. Overall, these poems are forceful episodes of collective biography revealing the experiences of many Southern women. It’s a collection that’s full of scenes and images that fill the senses, from the smell of blood to the feel of exhausted muscles and heavy tools laid to rest; “Ours was never a still life,” a speaker notes wryly in “Ode to the Dish Sink.”
Beautiful and powerful verses about the lives of women on American farms.Pub Date: April 19, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-945049-22-4
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Shadelandhouse Modern Press
Review Posted Online: June 2, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Breathtakingly magical.
A powerful homage to the natural world, from England by way of Canada.
Combining poetic words (somewhat reminiscent of Mary Oliver’s poetry in their passion for the natural world) with truly stunning illustrations, this unusually beautiful book brings to readers the magic and wonder of nature. This is not a book about ecology or habitat; this is a book that encourages readers to revel in, and connect with, the natural world. Focusing on a particular subject, whether it be animal, insect, or plant, each poem (rendered in a variety of forms) delivers a “spell” that can be playful, poignant, or entreating. They are most effective when read aloud (as readers are encouraged to do in the introduction). Gorgeous illustrations accompany the words, both as stand-alone double-page spreads and as spot and full-page illustrations. Each remarkable image exhibits a perfect mastery of design, lively line, and watercolor technique while the sophisticated palette of warms and cools both soothes and surprises. This intense interweaving of words and pictures creates a sense of immersion and interaction—and a sense that the natural world is part of us. A glossary encourages readers to find each named species in the illustrations throughout the book––and to go one step further and bring the book outside, to find the actual subjects in nature. Very much in the spirit of the duo’s magisterial The Lost Words (2018), this companion is significantly smaller than its sprawling companion; at just 6.5 by 4.5 inches when closed, it will easily fit into a backpack or generously sized pocket. “Wonder is needed now more than ever,” Macfarlane writes in the introduction, and this book delivers it.
Breathtakingly magical. (Poetry. 6-adult)Pub Date: Oct. 27, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-4870-0779-9
Page Count: 120
Publisher: House of Anansi Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 23, 2020
Observant, affecting writing about an Australian childhood.
Moncrief’s debut memoir recalls the joys and sorrows of growing up in an Australian country town.
“It was the late 1960s,” remarks the author, “but we were still living in what was effectively 1950s rural Australia.” Along with his older brother, Darren, Moncrief was raised in Tilburn, 30 miles outside of Melbourne. The memoir focuses predominantly on vivid memories from the author’s childhood in a quiet town where “everyone minded their own business and kept mostly to themselves.” Moncrief recalls journeys to a racetrack with his father, who trained horses, befriending a lizard that lived under the back step of the family home, and nursing an injured sparrow back to health. These sensitive recollections are interspersed with tales of cruelty and abuse. As a young boy, the author admits, he received so many bloody noses from his brother that one of his nostrils became “permanently blocked.” The memoir also charts the author’s coping with his parents’ divorce and grappling with adolescence. Each chapter is built around a particular person or event that left an impression on the author’s young mind. One, for example, discusses the author’s first sight of a pregnant woman and his father’s remarking, “pregnant women are beautiful.” This heavily anecdotal approach has the potential to grow tiring, but Moncrief avoids that by capturing a young boy’s naiveté in a satisfyingly amusing manner: “I couldn’t imagine what was wrong with her—that big, swollen stomach bursting forth from her body!” The author has the power to tug at the reader’s emotions—after his lizard was killed by a bully, he writes sorrowfully: “[I] pushed his little body into the crack from where I’d taken him the night before. ‘I’m so sorry, little mate,’ I said. ‘I love you so much.’ ” Moncrief puts a recognizably Australian stamp on the memoir by using Aussie vernacular, from dunny (toilet) to chooks (chickens). Tenderly evoking the minutiae of childhood while celebrating liberation from its horrors, this thoughtfully written, well-balanced book will encourage readers to reflect on their own upbringings.
Observant, affecting writing about an Australian childhood.Pub Date: Jan. 13, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-72839-716-0
Page Count: 234
Publisher: AuthorHouseUK
Review Posted Online: April 22, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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