12/26/16

Book of the Week (12/26/2016)


Winter by Patricia Fargnoli (Brookline, NH: Hobblebush Books, 2013).

Now that the winter season is settling in (as I write this, it is below freezing with wind gusts and snow squalls here in NH!), I'm in the mood for some books about winter to curl up with under warm blankets while sipping a hot cup of tea. Past NH poet laureate Patricia Fargnoli's latest volume of poetry, Winter, fulfills this need perfectly.
“There is a prologue to the articulate—that is the silence,” said Derek Wolcott. “When that silence arrives, it can be the beginning of art.” As a prologue to her poems, Pat Fargnoli has listened deeply to the silence of winter, and the result is a collection of poems that capture the flame of the fox, the hunger of horses, and the solitude of snow—“ the flakes settling on your parka / like the dust from just-born stars.” What is articulated through these poems stems not from reticence, but from quiet observation and wisdom. Such great attention teaches us “the natural world comes to join you / if you go out to meet it,” and so we come to understand that “truth is found in silence.”- Meg Kearney

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