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Hibernaculum
“Sarah Colona's poems are mysterious, accurate, and spontaneous, qualities Elizabeth Bishop held as essential to poetry. In Colona's poems, clarity and precision counterbalance the uncanny, often off-kilter moments they render: the familiar is radiant with strangeness, the strange surprisingly recognizable. It is a rare delight to read poems so finely made, word by word, line by line. Hibernaculum is a welcome debut!” – Eric Pankey, author of Trace: Poems
"Hibernaculum gathers together some of Sarah E. Colona's best poems, each one a testament to what life is--harsh and beautiful, rare and sometimes bittersweet. Drawn from folklore and fairy tales, these moving poems are sharp as a needle and delicate as an old, brittle bone. If you read one poetry collection this year, Hibernaculum should be it.” -- Erzebet YellowBoy, editor of Cabinet des Fées and author of Sleeping Helena
“Straddling the realm of ordinary domestic spaces and dark fairytale forests, Sarah Colona’s Hibernaculum harbors lovely things inside intricate spaces and slender lyrics, creating a stunningly beautiful debut, filled with lockets and envelopes, tiny trinkets and winter landscapes.” --Kristy Bowen, author of girl show
"Hibernaculum gathers together some of Sarah E. Colona's best poems, each one a testament to what life is--harsh and beautiful, rare and sometimes bittersweet. Drawn from folklore and fairy tales, these moving poems are sharp as a needle and delicate as an old, brittle bone. If you read one poetry collection this year, Hibernaculum should be it.” -- Erzebet YellowBoy, editor of Cabinet des Fées and author of Sleeping Helena
“Straddling the realm of ordinary domestic spaces and dark fairytale forests, Sarah Colona’s Hibernaculum harbors lovely things inside intricate spaces and slender lyrics, creating a stunningly beautiful debut, filled with lockets and envelopes, tiny trinkets and winter landscapes.” --Kristy Bowen, author of girl show
86 pages, Paperback
First published October 15, 2013
151 people want to read
About the author
Sarah E. Colona
4 books9 followersSarah E. Colona is the author of Hibernaculum (Gold Wake Press, 2013), Thimbles (dancing girl press, 2012) and That Sister (dancing girl press, 2016). Her latest chapbook, Inscription for a Burning Book, is forthcoming with dgp. A graduate of George Mason's MFA program, she lives in her home state: New Jersey.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
November 7, 2013
"Some words hold us tighter than people."
In this, Sarah Colona's first full-length collection, many of her words did indeed hold me tight in an inviting but always edgy embrace. This is a poetry book full of linguistic magic and based on the same charm and danger (light and darkness) that many of us find to be such an irresistible combination in fairy tales.
As she writes in the beginning of one poem:
1. Make no mistake
Stories are predators not pets
But we long for company:
Forgetting even familiar words
Sharpen, burn, penetrate.
2. Each tale like the forest,
Darkest at its center.
But despite the fascination with darkness, this book has a wry and clever touch throughout. Colona is smart poet, she knows her stuff, and I particularly enjoyed the poems that meld religion/mythology and folklore with contemporary settings...as in this one, probably my favorite:
SIX AT THE GOLDEN DAWN
Like clockwork, God leads his band of angels,
Clad in overalls with embroidered names,
To the largest booth at the diner's rear.
A clatter of hard hats. Jukebox music
Wobbles. Shivers into recognition.
Nothing tops Sinatra, or crisp cheese blintzes,
With sour cream and blueberry preserves,
Which God prefers---homemade---in New Jersey.
Gabe and Mike fight over the Sports section.
Raph slurps cold coffee, while the rest keep watch:
The worst waitress remains invisible.
Still, God tips like it's the Apocalypse.
In this, Sarah Colona's first full-length collection, many of her words did indeed hold me tight in an inviting but always edgy embrace. This is a poetry book full of linguistic magic and based on the same charm and danger (light and darkness) that many of us find to be such an irresistible combination in fairy tales.
As she writes in the beginning of one poem:
1. Make no mistake
Stories are predators not pets
But we long for company:
Forgetting even familiar words
Sharpen, burn, penetrate.
2. Each tale like the forest,
Darkest at its center.
But despite the fascination with darkness, this book has a wry and clever touch throughout. Colona is smart poet, she knows her stuff, and I particularly enjoyed the poems that meld religion/mythology and folklore with contemporary settings...as in this one, probably my favorite:
SIX AT THE GOLDEN DAWN
Like clockwork, God leads his band of angels,
Clad in overalls with embroidered names,
To the largest booth at the diner's rear.
A clatter of hard hats. Jukebox music
Wobbles. Shivers into recognition.
Nothing tops Sinatra, or crisp cheese blintzes,
With sour cream and blueberry preserves,
Which God prefers---homemade---in New Jersey.
Gabe and Mike fight over the Sports section.
Raph slurps cold coffee, while the rest keep watch:
The worst waitress remains invisible.
Still, God tips like it's the Apocalypse.
December 15, 2013
As the title implies, these are winter poems—foreboding but also a little magical. What is that flash of red through the trees? The characters fight and flee, always in danger: "See how I am sewn up with secrets. / Stone-bellied. Wolf perpetually abed." The best of these are bravado-filled, spoken like true heroines. Their fearlessness carries this unified collection through myths both familiar and not.
December 12, 2013
Sarah Colona’s debut collection of poetry, Hibernaculum, is a collection meant to protect us from winter. Like the title suggests, these poems offer us a kind of winter residence and through their insight and questions, we are safer for having read the collection.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews