Review: To Cleave: Poems

To Cleave: Poems by Barbara Rockman
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Barbara Rockman's "To Cleave" is an amazingly beautiful, poignant, powerful book. Here we find what we seldom do in a collection-a careful eye that truly sees both the natural world and the very human; a craft that seeks just the right word, not just for sense but for sound and thus a music so often missing in contemporary poetry, rich in assonance, alliteration, quiet and subtle half-rhymes, never overbearing, always true.

Sections seem devoted to a backpacking trip, her childhood, raising her daughters, natural disasters like Fukushima, married life, love, loss, and love again. The emotion is not wrought with false notes or strained surrealism. The images are carefully chose, metaphor and symbolic truths living below their quiet surface. The domestic life blends with the natural world. A certain knowledge of geology and biology adds fullness. There are poems where she sews herself into oneness with that natural world. The bittersweet taste of death and loss add savor.

This is the finest collection of poetry by a contemporary writer that I have read in too long  a time. If you love reading poetry, this is a meal and a dessert you will relish. If you are poet, as am I, you will be filled with that positive envy--the one that drives you back to trying to sing with words the way Rockman does in these poems. To be read and reread, I am certain.


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