Green the Witch-Hazel Wood

by Emily Hiestand

Poems deal with such topics as nature, family, love, childhood, friendship and life

Genres: Poetry

128 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 1989

Reviews

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a solid book of poems of the type that interrogate the poetry-making activity-- it's one of those kinds of books:)

Really, it's enlivened by an interest in the new physics, the way that all kinds of things-- observation and reportage-- are fraught with radical doubt, and asks how this should affect the work we do as writers and simply people in the world.

I guess I like those kinds of questions some, but I'm not sure what I think of Hiestand's answers here-- the last section of the book comes close to being languagey without really being languagey, reducing the power of words to a kind of game, and steering further away from the kind of close interrogations of the world she started with. I get it that it's a tall order to answer these questions in a satisfying way, but the way the issue is addressed feels more like a retreat than a move forward. That's more harsh than I think this book deserves, but I don't know how else to express what I take as a retreat from the book's potential energies.

[Mia · Rating 4 out of 5]

There's a gorgeous quiet in some of these.