And I'm engaged and I'm enraged and I'm enchanted

JoSelle Vanderhooft (upstart_crow) has kindly allowed me to post her review of Postcards from the Province of Hyphens, which will appear in the forthcoming Star*Line and has already made my week:

Reading Sonya Taaffe's first full length poetry collection Postcards from the Province of Hyphens is a little bit like wandering into a whirlwind: one feels a little breathless upon emerging and all the better for the experience.

Calling the forty-eight poems and prose pieces comprising this hefty collection 'eclectic' would not do justice to their breadth and scope. In a mere one hundred pages, Taaffe takes the reader on a journey through such diverse things as Jewish history and culture ("Years Like Yahrzeit Candles"), Scots ballads ("The Third Corbie"), the Mayan underworld ("New Blood") and Greek myth ("Proteus Tells"). Even though her subject matter is as diverse and sometimes obscure, one rarely feels lost inside Taaffe's world because her poetry stresses lived experience over literary conceit. Whether talking about the misery of a Selkie confined to land ("Skins on Sule Skerry") or the love life of a commedia dell' arte zanni longing to break out of his repetitive stage business ("Harlequin, Lonely"), Taaffe's work concentrates on the great themes that undergird all great literature—war, death, the changing of seasons and, of course, love and sex.

Indeed, many of the pieces in Postcards from the Province of Hyphens concern themselves with the last of these subjects. From such grand themes as love lost and betrayed to the simple act of sleeping next to a lover, there's something delicate and deeply human in the sensuality of Taaffe's writing. One excellent example of this is the aptly-titled "Intercourse," reproduced here in full.

This art that sirens taught
to sailors: how to drown
in all you love, go down
salt-eyed, openmouthed
for wonder or grief, loss
and return no more assured
than foam sliding like breath
over the thrust and hollow
of the sea. This art that
sailors taught to sirens:
how to hold fast, release,
over and in, one motion,
remembrance concise as
a pearl in its ebb; how
to sing, and sing again,
though it is your heart
breaking on the strand.

But not all of Taaffe's poems concern themselves with the flesh. Several focus on nature and the changing of seasons. For example, the lovely "The Laying-Out" is a breathtaking, impressionistic picture of autumn while "Turn of the Century, Jack-in-the-Green" is a haunting look at the destruction of the natural world as seen through the eyes of the fabled Green Man. For fans of truly unique lyrical poetry, Postcards from the Province of Hyphens is a must.

Lyrical sensuality. This is cool. Maybe I should write more erotica after all.