Compulsions of Silkworms and Bees: Poems

by Julianna Baggott

"Part primer, part credo, part arm-swinging gambol, this wonderful book is resonant with wit and insight."--Linda Bierds

Compulsions of Silkworms and Bees takes up the tradition of Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet, but on poetry's own terms. At first glance, Baggott's candid counsel can be seen as a manual on writing poetry, written in poems. As the book unfolds, however, these poems take on the larger landscape of love and...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 080713256X
• ISBN13: 9780807132562
• Release Date: March 2007
• Publisher: Pleiades Press
• Length: 80 Pages
• Weight: 0.32 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 6.1" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

Good read

Her poetry is meaningful and quite deep. I had to read for class but I truly did enjoy it.

A Well-Tuned Compulsion

I am a writer and reader of poetry who usually stays away from poems about poetry or the writing of it, but Julianna Baggott's new collection resonates beyond the sometimes self-involved world of poetry. It ventures into moments of human life and creates vignettes of intimacy, so much so that her vehicle of using the craft of writing as a spring board fades, and true human emotion is unearthed. Her language has a clarity and vibrancy, and it is from there that her images stay hinged in the mind: "...my mother shining with sweat, not so much/ the moth-tinging bulb above her head,/ but the poem, in the road/ hissing like a rearing hood-flared cobra, the old sibilant iron,/ its red glowing eye."