Messenger: New and Selected Poems 1976–2006
Ellen Bryant Voigt, . . Norton, $25.95 (238pp) ISBN 978-0-393-06250-2
Consistently respected by her contemporaries, Voigt's quiet but often violently powerful poems of autobiography, pastoral and history have not always gained the broad attention they deserve. This seventh book (her first retrospective) may ensure that she gets it. Voigt's descriptive powers pop out first: a snake, for instance, is a "wrinkle coming toward me in the grass." Her anecdotes, scenic lyrics, parables and loosely structured sequences ask, however, to be judged for the ways in which they depict people—the poet, her husband, her sisters, their ailing and dying parents, or, in
Reviewed on: 11/20/2006
Genre: Fiction
Open Ebook - 240 pages - 978-0-393-06982-2
Paperback - 240 pages - 978-0-393-33144-8