INFLORESCENCE

by Sarah Hannah

Sarah Hannah follows her critically acclaimed first volume of poetry, Longing Distance , with Inflorescence , a compelling memoir-in-verse for her mother, Boston Expressionist painter Renee Rothbein, and their intense relationship in which they struggle with Rothbeins mental illness and eventual death from cancer. Hannahs characteristic love of traditional poetic forms, wit, and fascination with the natural world continue to manifest in this sometimes shocking story that cannot fail to move scores of readers, including anyone who has cared for the sick, dealt with mental illness, or lost someone close to them. However, Inflorescence is far more than a narrative of sickness and loss. Through rich language and use of metaphor, most often that of wildflowers, their common names and lore, Inflorescence often treats its subject matter obliquely, making the personal and particular universal. In all, Hannahs second volume of poetry examines unflinchingly the deep and difficult love between a mother and daughter, stares death in the face, and transforms a unique story into a series of luminous, transcendent truths.

Genres: Poetry

Paperback

Published August 31, 2007

About the author

Sarah Hannah received a B.A. from Wesleyan University and an M.F.A. from Columbia University. She is currently completing her doctorate in English Literature at Columbia University's Graduate School of the Arts and Sciences. Her poems have appeared in Parnassus, The Southern Review, Pivot, Barrow Street, Michigan Quarterly Review, Crab Orchard Review, Gulf Coast, and other journals. She was awarded a Governor's Fellowship for residencies at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts for summer 2001 and 2002. The original manuscript which became Longing Distance was a semi-finalist for the Yale Younger Poets Prize in 2002.

In 2006 Sarah Hannah was named Poet Laureate of a local conservation group, The Friends of Hemlock Gorge, of Newton, Massachusetts. Her work has appeared in Rattapallax, AGNI, and Fairy Tale Review (poem nominated for the Pushcart Prize 2006), among others. She was a contributing editor to Barrow Street.

Reviews

[Pam · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found this poet to be an inspiration. So sad that there won't be more from her.

[Diane · Rating 5 out of 5]

I gave it five stars because it's so impressive. Complex, intelligent and touching - filled with honesty and the details of caring for a dying parent delivered in a way that respects the tangle of contradictions involved in such a situation. The cover is a painting by the poet's artist mother. Many of the poems remind me of Plath - that echoing of sound and idea in a complicated and passionate (intense) person determined to meet life head on and grab it by the throat. I think I'll read her other book too.

[C · Rating 5 out of 5]

Devastating and beautiful given both the text itself and the author's death after the book was complete. This collection is formal, which is to say that it retains aspects of formal verse (dense lines, slant rhymes, etc.) that I find intriguing. Especially lovely: "Diana, Hunting Words," "Azarel" (which echoes Hecht's personification of death throughout Flight Among the Tombs), "A Daughter Proposes Lithium," "Night Nurse," "Indian Pipe," "Eternity, that Dumbwaiter," "The Hutch," "Five Years Passed Exactly, but Who's Counting?" etc.

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

Moments of such aching, aching beauty...

'I sleep too much;
I curl in at midday, sheepish,
In strange rooms.'

[Allison · Rating 4 out of 5]

Parts of this book stunned me, and some of it didn't. If there were a 3.5 rating that is what I would have given this instead.

[Sherry Chandler · Rating 5 out of 5]

My review

[Heather · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book's first two sections are uneven - but the second half of the book is full of evocative language and a fighting voice.

[Kris · Rating 4 out of 5]

A strong, nicely arranged collection of poems about grief and witnessing the decline of a parent with a mental illness. My personal favorites from the collection managed to make my eyes tear:
"Read the House"
"At Last, Fire Seen As a Psychotic Break"
"Westwood Lodge, 1980-1990"
"Night Nurse"
"Blessed Thistle"
"An Elegy for Bells"

Also really liked "Macbeth's Problem", "Azarel", and "Threepence, Great Britain, 1943"