Unmentionables

by Beth Ann Fennelly

Book Overview

With elegant wordplay and her usual subversive wit, Beth Ann Fennelly explores the "unmentionable"--not only what is considered too bold but also what can't be said because words are insufficient. In sections of short narratives, she questions our everyday human foibles. Three longer sequences display her admirable reach and fierce intelligence: One, "The Kudzu Chronicles," is a rollicking piece about the transplanted weed. Another, "Bertha Morisot:...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0393066053
• ISBN13: 9780393066050
• Release Date: April 2008
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Length: 128 Pages
• Weight: 0.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.5" x 8.6"

Customer Reviews

Tries to speak of what can't be spoken with inspired and detailed lyrical verse

The word "unmentionable" does not, strictly speaking, mean something that is inappropriate; it can also mean something that words can't describe well. "Unmentionables" is a poetry collection by experienced and prolific author Beth Ann Fennelly, who tries to speak of what can't be spoken with inspired and detailed lyrical verse. The result is an enlightening and entertaining reading experience. Community library poetry collections would do well in acquiring "Unmentionables". "Colorplate 68": Eugene worsens./ At fifty I am old./ I paint en plein air no more.// April: he gives me a bunch of violets./ I crush them/ onto my pallette,/ suture my canvas/ with violets.

"No one guessed... no one ever guessed I swallowed brilliance."

Fennelly is like a bright sparrow, ever-moving, garbed at times in colorful feathers of another species, at others content to perch and watch as life marches by. Bemused by the easy memories of youth in America, the poet considers how drastically the world has changed, how our naiveté marks us targets, our adamant innocence begging to be taught real-world lessons, too long the cherished only child in a country where lack and pain grows more visible: "Because of our bemused affection for our youthful cruelties. It's still so hard to accept that people who have never seen me would like to see me dead. And you as well. Our fat babies. Our spoiled dogs. And I, a girl at thirty-two, who likes to think she was a rebel... what would they think of me, the terrorists and terrified? Wouldn't they agree I've got it coming?" (Cow Tipping) A section is devoted to "Berthe Morisot: Retrospective", the poet slipping into the mind of a paint-stained artist saturated with light and shadow, insight and the infallible moment of creativity, of purpose: "Degas, Renoir, Manet with his two-pronged beard- go to the Café Guerbois. Let them drink calvados On their way home, let them look up from the cobbles to where I've hung the yellow canvas of my studio window see while you boys leapfrog in the alley my light is burning" (Berthe Morisot: Retrospective, Colorplate 13) The years of such joy now past, the artist reminisces: "Am I not yet that girl who pried, in secret, the diamond from Mama's hat pin? No one guessed no one ever guessed I swallowed brilliance, nature's hardest substance scoring me." (Berthe Morisot: Retrospective, Colorplate 70) True to her heart and her inspiration, Fennelly returns to her source: "Poems you burn in the sink. Poems that had to go and use your name, never mind that soon you'll be 16, hate your name." (People Ask What My Daughter Will Think of My Poems When She's 16 Tethered to the world by what she values, Fennelly soars through time, past and present, the many rooms of an imagination fueled by simple observations, profound realizations, an attempt to bridge two worlds, fanciful and real, to travel between them and with impunity, a seemingly easy feat for such a writer: "I pumped my swing at six so hard my sneakers toed the sky. You know, don't you, what happened next- after the swing set's stiff legs rocked thrice- but before I hit the ground- I flew." (Say You Waved: A Dream Song Cycle) In four sections, the poet unleashes the images of the imaginative journey blazing through the pages of this collection: "The Kudzu Chronicles"; Berthe Morisot: Retrospective"; and the series of Dream Songs. Her world expanded by an open heart and open mind, this poet never, never disappoints, always leaves me filled with the pure joy of language that expounds the boundaries of my experience. Luan Gaines/ 2008.