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Swimming with a Hundred Year Old Snapping Turtle Paperback – January 1, 2008
Poetry. "Freya Manfred always startles me by how close she gets to everything she sees. That's her tough luck, but it makes her a wonderful poet"--Philip Roth.
- GenresPoetry
Unknown Binding
First published January 2, 2008
13 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
September 3, 2013
“My poems are written by a spirit on a stone." So begins the first poem in this exquisite little book.
If you're not familiar with Freya Manfred's poetry, this book is an excellent place to begin. If you are familiar with her poetry, add this to your collection. Reading it is a deep and rich experience. She is close to nature, to people and to self. Read the poems out loud. Take them with you. Sneak looks when you're supposed to be listening to a professor or a friend. Sit in a park, sniff the air, watch birds. "I was married here by Eagle Rock," she says in "Blue Mound, Luverne, Minnesota", the last poem in the book; "Before that I ran away to write poems." I understand that well. Seated at my desk in Sapporo, Japan, I smell the fragrant air as it blows across Blue Mound and recall the times when I stood by Eagle Rock and dreamed. "Swimming With a Hundred Year Old Snapping Turtle" is a treasure.
"Swimming With a Hundred Year Old Snapping Turtle" is available from Red Dragonfly Press, Northfield, Minnesota, www.reddragonflypress.org
If you're not familiar with Freya Manfred's poetry, this book is an excellent place to begin. If you are familiar with her poetry, add this to your collection. Reading it is a deep and rich experience. She is close to nature, to people and to self. Read the poems out loud. Take them with you. Sneak looks when you're supposed to be listening to a professor or a friend. Sit in a park, sniff the air, watch birds. "I was married here by Eagle Rock," she says in "Blue Mound, Luverne, Minnesota", the last poem in the book; "Before that I ran away to write poems." I understand that well. Seated at my desk in Sapporo, Japan, I smell the fragrant air as it blows across Blue Mound and recall the times when I stood by Eagle Rock and dreamed. "Swimming With a Hundred Year Old Snapping Turtle" is a treasure.
"Swimming With a Hundred Year Old Snapping Turtle" is available from Red Dragonfly Press, Northfield, Minnesota, www.reddragonflypress.org
July 20, 2010
Read this one before My Only Home after reading a couple of Manfred's poems at Garrison Keillor's Writer's Almanac.
She is wise and excruciatingly personal, and brave enough to be so. There are real toads in her imaginary gardens, or rather real snapping turtles in her lake.
In this one, I love the section "Just Like a Woman" that starts with a disclaimer of sort protecting us all: "These poems arise from conversations with others about their marriages, and from reflections on my thirty year marriage to my beloved husband.... Thus, many voices speak." I think the first time I started this section, I hadn't read the disclaimer...and thought, "Whoa! She's really putting it out there, and how can she still be married?" Then I realized there were various speakers, and went back and read the little introductory remarks, which came on the backside of an epigraph by Robert Bly.
She is wise and excruciatingly personal, and brave enough to be so. There are real toads in her imaginary gardens, or rather real snapping turtles in her lake.
In this one, I love the section "Just Like a Woman" that starts with a disclaimer of sort protecting us all: "These poems arise from conversations with others about their marriages, and from reflections on my thirty year marriage to my beloved husband.... Thus, many voices speak." I think the first time I started this section, I hadn't read the disclaimer...and thought, "Whoa! She's really putting it out there, and how can she still be married?" Then I realized there were various speakers, and went back and read the little introductory remarks, which came on the backside of an epigraph by Robert Bly.
February 17, 2024
SO GOOD!! a local author that I just so happened to stumble upon in the library and was SO pleasantly surprised with how moving these poems were! I have been thinking about "honey from the hive" all day since I read that one!
May 5, 2009
I have recently fallen in love with the poetry of Freya Manfred. Like me she loves water, in her case lakes, in my case rivers and lakes, and she knows them as she knows her own family. These poems are regional only in the sense that Manfred dwells in the depths and the reflections of the water she seeks out. And these are indeed poems of great depth and clarity and richness. I would like to be able to put this book on both my "read" and "to-read" shelves as I will be carruing it around with me for a long time and dipping back in over and over again.
Here it is months later and I'm still obsessed with these poems.
This collection has been nominated for the Midwest Booksellers Association Bookseller's Choice Awards.
Here it is months later and I'm still obsessed with these poems.
This collection has been nominated for the Midwest Booksellers Association Bookseller's Choice Awards.
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September 26, 2018Author Recommended by Eleanor Arnason
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews