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Headwaters: Poems
Rash yet tender, chastened yet lush, Headwaters is a book of opposites, a book of wild abandon by one of the most formally exacting poets of our time. Animals populate its pages owl, groundhog, fox, each with its own inimitable survival skills and the poet who so meticulously observes their behaviors has accumulated a lifetime s worth of skills herself: she too has survived. The power of these extraordinary poems lies in their recognition that all our experience is ultimately useless that human beings are at every moment beginners, facing the earth as if for the first time. "Don t you think I m doing better," asks the first poem. "You got sick you got well you got sick," says the last. Eschewing punctuation, forgoing every symmetry, the poems hurl themselves forward, driven by an urgent need to speak. Headwaters is a book of wisdom that refuses to be wise, a book of fresh beginnings by an American poet writing at the height of her powers."
- GenresPoetry
64 pages, Paperback
First published October 21, 2013
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 35 reviews
October 23, 2017
Most of these poems are vignettes of wild (and some not so wild) animals. Their lives are beautifully captured in these gemlike poems: tightly written and structured. Not so emotionally easy to enter, until you get to the poems of loss. The pain in these is palpable although still rendered with restraint.
Powerful in a way that creeps up on you, a cumulative power. By the end of the collection, I was almost breathless from the beauty of nature and the pain of loss so well rendered. Every word serves a purpose and the rhythm is quiet but strongly influences the sound and meaning of these lovely poems.
Powerful in a way that creeps up on you, a cumulative power. By the end of the collection, I was almost breathless from the beauty of nature and the pain of loss so well rendered. Every word serves a purpose and the rhythm is quiet but strongly influences the sound and meaning of these lovely poems.
October 24, 2022
starting my poetry reading era
February 18, 2023
Let’s face it: these poems are better than scripture.
November 5, 2013
These poems are crisp, clear, and pitch-perfect, despite their complete lack of punctuation. Voigt has a tremendous ear and eye for the line break, and the voice here contains both the wisdom that comes only with experience, as well as the awe and wonder of childhood. A marvelous balancing act. I will have to buy this to read yet again (I read this twice through). My favorite poems were "Headwaters", "Stones", "Moles", "Birch", and "Sleep". A powerful book, short yet full of inspiration.
August 1, 2014
Voice through unpunctuated streams and sharp enjambments. Slim, quick poems. Like:
“time
is speeding up in the bad movie of my life months fly off
The calendar or the camera stays fixed on one tree
In leaf no leaves in leaf sunrise sunset”
“time
is speeding up in the bad movie of my life months fly off
The calendar or the camera stays fixed on one tree
In leaf no leaves in leaf sunrise sunset”
December 20, 2018
Love the line breaks and syntax and lack of punctuation and pacing in these poems, they powerfully carry the whole collection.
June 19, 2020
MY MOTHER
my mother my mother my mother she
could do anything so she did everything the world
was an unplowed field a dress to be hemmed a scraped knee it needed
a casserole it needed another alto in the choir her motto was apply yourself
the secret of life was spreading your gifts why hide your light
under a bushel you might
forget it there in the dark times the lonely times
the sun gone down on her resolve she slept a little first
so she’d be fresh she put on a little lipstick drawing on her smile
she pulled that hair up off her face she pulled her stockings on she stepped
into her pumps she took up her matching purse already
packed with everything they all would learn
they would be nice they would
apologize they would be grateful whenever
they had forgotten what to pack she never did
she had a spare she kissed your cheek she wiped the mark
away with her own spit she marched you out again unless you were
that awful sort of stubborn broody child who more and more
I was who once had been so sweet so mild staying put
where she put me what happened
must have been the bushel I was hiding in
the sun gone down on her resolve she slept a little first
so she’d be fresh she pulled her stockings on she’d packed
the words for my every lack she had a little lipstick on her teeth the mark
on my cheek would not rub off she gave the fluids from her mouth
to it she gave the tissues in her ample purse to it I never did
apologize I let my sister succor those in need and suffer
the little children my mother
knew we are self-canceling she gave herself
a lifetime C an average grade from then on out she kept
the lights on day and night a garden needs the light the sun
could not be counted on she slept a little day and night she didn’t need
her stockings or her purse she watered she weeded she fertilized she stood
in front the tallest stalk keeping the deer the birds all
the world’s idle shameless thieves away
my mother my mother my mother she
could do anything so she did everything the world
was an unplowed field a dress to be hemmed a scraped knee it needed
a casserole it needed another alto in the choir her motto was apply yourself
the secret of life was spreading your gifts why hide your light
under a bushel you might
forget it there in the dark times the lonely times
the sun gone down on her resolve she slept a little first
so she’d be fresh she put on a little lipstick drawing on her smile
she pulled that hair up off her face she pulled her stockings on she stepped
into her pumps she took up her matching purse already
packed with everything they all would learn
they would be nice they would
apologize they would be grateful whenever
they had forgotten what to pack she never did
she had a spare she kissed your cheek she wiped the mark
away with her own spit she marched you out again unless you were
that awful sort of stubborn broody child who more and more
I was who once had been so sweet so mild staying put
where she put me what happened
must have been the bushel I was hiding in
the sun gone down on her resolve she slept a little first
so she’d be fresh she pulled her stockings on she’d packed
the words for my every lack she had a little lipstick on her teeth the mark
on my cheek would not rub off she gave the fluids from her mouth
to it she gave the tissues in her ample purse to it I never did
apologize I let my sister succor those in need and suffer
the little children my mother
knew we are self-canceling she gave herself
a lifetime C an average grade from then on out she kept
the lights on day and night a garden needs the light the sun
could not be counted on she slept a little day and night she didn’t need
her stockings or her purse she watered she weeded she fertilized she stood
in front the tallest stalk keeping the deer the birds all
the world’s idle shameless thieves away
November 11, 2023
I loved the experience of reading this poetry book because of how unique it is, though I had a hard time clicking with the lack of punctuation, which is what defines this collection and makes it so unique. This is a book that pushes the boundaries of the English language to their limits by removing any type of boundary between thoughts. I definitely plan on reading this again.
February 15, 2019
Exceptional. Beautiful natural images flowing with personal experiences and deeper truths. I'm heading out to purchase a copy for my poetry library.
December 26, 2013
In her eighth and latest book of poems, Headwaters, Ellen Bryant Voigt reminds us how much we rely on punctuation and capitalization to shape the information we obtain from poetry. There are no sentences in this collection; there is no punctuation to indicate pacing and clusters of meaning. These poems strictly rely upon line breaks and syntax. With these tools alone, Voigt has crafted a very personal and emotionally powerful new collection.
Lack of punctuation destabilizes the text. It’s not always clear how to read the lines. Voigt’s syntax is constructed so that words often have one meaning when applied to what comes before and another when applied to what comes after. In addition, the run-on nature of the lines can create new resonances. Here is the start of the poem “My Mother”:
It is as though we are experiencing the uninterrupted voice in the speaker’s head. The poem’s description of the mother is of a very talented person, but the unpunctuated lines also imply a frenetic and somewhat willful individual. The repetition of “my mother” unbroken by commas suggests both admiring and exasperated feelings toward this person.
Without the conventional signposts of punctuation, shifts of tone come without warning. Voigt uses this to great effect as the above poem continues. With nothing but a stanza break, we find ourselves suddenly thrust into much darker emotional territory.
The perspective shifts as we sense a break in the mother’s resolve. This begins a much more complicated depiction that includes the mother’s failing connections to reality and the speaker’s own feelings of sadness, resentment, and guilt.
The poems in this collection are filled with small, carefully observed details about life in what seems to be Voigt’s home in rural Vermont. The speaker is someone who has a deep knowledge of and empathy for this world. Her diction is plain and the tone is one of casual certainty. As the poems turn from details of rural life to the speaker’s more personal musings, the sure-footed language continues, but it describes much more uncertain emotional territory. The poem, “Hog-Nosed Skunk” is an example. This is the entire poem:
Sadness and melancholy thread these poems. In this one, the description of the skunk in a squirrel trap takes a powerful emotional plunge in the last line. The repetition indicates not only the skunk’s response to its predicament but also the speaker’s personal identification with the trapped animal as “she just gives up.”
These poems take hopelessness as a given. For Voigt, the everyday harshness and isolation of rural life—-the cry of a mouse in an owl’s grasp, male ducks holding a female duck underwater until she doesn’t resurface, a freshly killed young bear mistaken for a child—-also includes the speaker’s own solitude and lack of connection.
Voigt avoids the temptation to put the speaker’s struggles and uncertainties at the center of her poems. There are no large revelations or messages that relegate all else in the poem to metaphor. Her poems describe a full and lively world of which she is only part. The pleasure in reading this collection comes from the strength of the language, the quality of description, and the consistency of tone. There is a life being lived here and an active mind grappling with issues of connection and loss. Without flash or pyrotechnics, Ellen Bryant Voigt presents a collection that is thrillingly true to unobjectified experience. In its unassuming approach, Headwaters is a challenging, distinctive, and immensely satisfying new book.
Lack of punctuation destabilizes the text. It’s not always clear how to read the lines. Voigt’s syntax is constructed so that words often have one meaning when applied to what comes before and another when applied to what comes after. In addition, the run-on nature of the lines can create new resonances. Here is the start of the poem “My Mother”:
my mother my mother my mother she
could do anything so she did everything the world
was an unplowed field a dress to be hemmed a scraped knee it
needed
a casserole it needed another alto in the choir her motto was
apply yourself
It is as though we are experiencing the uninterrupted voice in the speaker’s head. The poem’s description of the mother is of a very talented person, but the unpunctuated lines also imply a frenetic and somewhat willful individual. The repetition of “my mother” unbroken by commas suggests both admiring and exasperated feelings toward this person.
Without the conventional signposts of punctuation, shifts of tone come without warning. Voigt uses this to great effect as the above poem continues. With nothing but a stanza break, we find ourselves suddenly thrust into much darker emotional territory.
the secret of life was spreading your gifts why hide your light
under a bushel you might
forget it there in the dark times the lonely times
the sun gone down on her resolve she slept a little first
The perspective shifts as we sense a break in the mother’s resolve. This begins a much more complicated depiction that includes the mother’s failing connections to reality and the speaker’s own feelings of sadness, resentment, and guilt.
The poems in this collection are filled with small, carefully observed details about life in what seems to be Voigt’s home in rural Vermont. The speaker is someone who has a deep knowledge of and empathy for this world. Her diction is plain and the tone is one of casual certainty. As the poems turn from details of rural life to the speaker’s more personal musings, the sure-footed language continues, but it describes much more uncertain emotional territory. The poem, “Hog-Nosed Skunk” is an example. This is the entire poem:
because she’s half blind and thus prefers
complete not partial darkness and because
she cannot raise her tail entirely over her back
in order to use her one weapon her one defense
when you come to the squirrel trap from behind
and cover with a blanket the wire box
although my beloved won’t believe it
she just gives up she just gives up
Sadness and melancholy thread these poems. In this one, the description of the skunk in a squirrel trap takes a powerful emotional plunge in the last line. The repetition indicates not only the skunk’s response to its predicament but also the speaker’s personal identification with the trapped animal as “she just gives up.”
These poems take hopelessness as a given. For Voigt, the everyday harshness and isolation of rural life—-the cry of a mouse in an owl’s grasp, male ducks holding a female duck underwater until she doesn’t resurface, a freshly killed young bear mistaken for a child—-also includes the speaker’s own solitude and lack of connection.
Voigt avoids the temptation to put the speaker’s struggles and uncertainties at the center of her poems. There are no large revelations or messages that relegate all else in the poem to metaphor. Her poems describe a full and lively world of which she is only part. The pleasure in reading this collection comes from the strength of the language, the quality of description, and the consistency of tone. There is a life being lived here and an active mind grappling with issues of connection and loss. Without flash or pyrotechnics, Ellen Bryant Voigt presents a collection that is thrillingly true to unobjectified experience. In its unassuming approach, Headwaters is a challenging, distinctive, and immensely satisfying new book.
August 12, 2016
No contemporary poet speaks more eloquently about syntax than Ellen Bryant Voigt. In her 2009 book, The Art of Syntax: Rhythm of Thought, Rhythm of Song, Voigt delivered a brilliant examination of syntax in poems, and how the sentence and the line operate together. As a poet and teacher, Voigt is known for her clarity and rhetorical authority, and The Art of Syntax is no exception, detailing exactly how a Frost or Kunitz poem works with and against English sentence structure to create its effect.
All this makes it particularly astonishing and wonderful to read the poems in Headwaters. At first glance, it appears as if Voigt uses no sentences at all. Certainly there are no periods, no commas, no colons, no dashes. The long lines twist down the page, one thought spilling into the next. The voice is wry, uncertain, as in the start of the title poem:
I made a large mistake I left my house I went into the world it was not
the most perilous hostile part but I couldn’t tell among the people there
And on it goes, unstoppable to the last line: “but don’t you think I’m doing better in this regard I try to do better.”
Although Voigt isn’t the first poet to work without punctuation, her formalist bent gives this book an extraordinary power. That is, Voigt’s lifelong interest in poetic structures makes the individual poems of Headwaters feel spontaneous, but the book itself highly composed, a monument to the conscious mind’s compulsion to order and interpret a chaotic world.
I did an interview with Voigt about the book, and her process behind it, at The Rumpus:
http://therumpus.net/2013/11/the-rump...
All this makes it particularly astonishing and wonderful to read the poems in Headwaters. At first glance, it appears as if Voigt uses no sentences at all. Certainly there are no periods, no commas, no colons, no dashes. The long lines twist down the page, one thought spilling into the next. The voice is wry, uncertain, as in the start of the title poem:
I made a large mistake I left my house I went into the world it was not
the most perilous hostile part but I couldn’t tell among the people there
And on it goes, unstoppable to the last line: “but don’t you think I’m doing better in this regard I try to do better.”
Although Voigt isn’t the first poet to work without punctuation, her formalist bent gives this book an extraordinary power. That is, Voigt’s lifelong interest in poetic structures makes the individual poems of Headwaters feel spontaneous, but the book itself highly composed, a monument to the conscious mind’s compulsion to order and interpret a chaotic world.
I did an interview with Voigt about the book, and her process behind it, at The Rumpus:
http://therumpus.net/2013/11/the-rump...
July 26, 2018
Dreamlike stream-of-consciousness associations create collages of images with varying degrees of clarity, as if the poet slumbers and wakes and slumbers through this collection of reveries half remembered, of dreams half told.
February 6, 2023
What I find most interesting in the poems is their account of age. I'm thinking of the many poems registering her long love with a "beloved," and how she anticipates the ending of that love in their death. It's how the poems find the more tender parts of this morbid sentiment, aware and realistic about the ending, but also present and current with that love.
And maybe, for me, the larger arc of the poems involves that "present and current" way of living. The poems are prepared for nostalgia. Like nostalgia is this mise en place, all set to bring value to how she lives in the moment. It's a distinction I would draw with poems that feel sepia-drenched and sentimental with their nostalgia. They reminisce. And they over sentimentalize or press the past into some melodrama that exaggerates what had happened. I'm not even sure I would call Voigt's poems nostalgic, but that's only because there is a normal poetry where the poet is avid to indulge what they experienced in the past.
These poems handle the past more matter-of-factly. like having lived in the present for so long, the poet can't help but remember what had happened. She's reminded of some other time. And that time reminds her of another time. So that all these past moments accumulate to influence the present. And this is the pleasure in the poems. How they easily shift from one memory to the next, while still keeping the reader aware that the present is always there. A present informed by age, benefiting from all the experiences that have come with age, and recognizing what mortality means as someone ages.
And maybe, for me, the larger arc of the poems involves that "present and current" way of living. The poems are prepared for nostalgia. Like nostalgia is this mise en place, all set to bring value to how she lives in the moment. It's a distinction I would draw with poems that feel sepia-drenched and sentimental with their nostalgia. They reminisce. And they over sentimentalize or press the past into some melodrama that exaggerates what had happened. I'm not even sure I would call Voigt's poems nostalgic, but that's only because there is a normal poetry where the poet is avid to indulge what they experienced in the past.
These poems handle the past more matter-of-factly. like having lived in the present for so long, the poet can't help but remember what had happened. She's reminded of some other time. And that time reminds her of another time. So that all these past moments accumulate to influence the present. And this is the pleasure in the poems. How they easily shift from one memory to the next, while still keeping the reader aware that the present is always there. A present informed by age, benefiting from all the experiences that have come with age, and recognizing what mortality means as someone ages.
August 23, 2021
This is my first time reading Ellen Bryant Voigt. Remarkable. She is definitely a talented poet—lyrical, surprising, insightful. Voigt uses no punctuation in this book, often writing till the end of the margin and, to paraphrase her, "you have to follow her and just hang on, hoping that you understand it." That sounds worse than it is. The effect is usually not confusing. It's a different way of reading, though. I found myself having to trust myself and her writing, hoping my mind could make sense of it. Reading her poetry without punctuation felt like looking at the world upside down. I recognized new things, new angles, new combinations. Poetry without punctuation allows the writer/reader/mind to take leaps more readily it might feel awkward taking otherwise.
September 8, 2024
headwaters: I clung to my own life raft I had room on it for only me you're not surprised it grew smaller and smaller or maybe I grew larger and heavier but don't you think I'm doing better in this regard I try to do better
yearling
fix: my mother had another child sick unto death she needed me to fall in love with solitude I fell in love with it is my toy my happiness the child of my friends is never left alone
hog nosed skunk
geese: do they mean together to duplicate the cloud
bear: the plural pronoun is dangerous fiction the source of so much unexpected loneliness
sleep: a moral sense is exhausting I am exhausted a coma looks good to me // the Gods don't notice whining they notice the brief bright flares of human will
yearling
fix: my mother had another child sick unto death she needed me to fall in love with solitude I fell in love with it is my toy my happiness the child of my friends is never left alone
hog nosed skunk
geese: do they mean together to duplicate the cloud
bear: the plural pronoun is dangerous fiction the source of so much unexpected loneliness
sleep: a moral sense is exhausting I am exhausted a coma looks good to me // the Gods don't notice whining they notice the brief bright flares of human will
April 28, 2024
For national poetry month, I went to the library and selected this book of poetry, somewhat randomly. Ellen Bryant Voigt is new to me, and I wasn't sure what to expect. I'm still trying to figure out how poets can use just a small handful of words to convey a great depth of feeling and observation, sometimes personal and other times objective. Ms. Voigt's collection of poetry is another example of the magic that writers can create, leaving me breathless, impressed, and wondering.
My favorite poems in this collection were "Lost Boy," "Geese," and "Bear." The titles do not portray the depth of the content of each of these poems. I intend to read more of Ms. Voigt's poems.
My favorite poems in this collection were "Lost Boy," "Geese," and "Bear." The titles do not portray the depth of the content of each of these poems. I intend to read more of Ms. Voigt's poems.
December 11, 2021
I really wanted to like this collection. It felt connected to nature at the onset and had promise. But in the end it, to my sensibilities, embodied a old-time rustic aesthetic that felt flat. It isn't poorly written and, while I am not an uncritical reader of poetry, I wouldn't be surprised if I missed layers of depth hidden here. But the vibe and style put me off such that I will never know. Shout out to "Garter Snake", though, which is perhaps the only poem of the collection I enjoyed without qualification.
June 25, 2019
These poems are pastoral, wintry and northern rather than lush, capturing sublime moments in nature, encounters with animals, and daily human experiences. The same creatures, characters, and plants come up repeatedly. Simple, lovely, and melodious when read aloud. I particularly liked “Groundhog” and “Birch.”
July 30, 2020
I wasn’t sure how I felt about this at first–it took a few poems to understand the cadence. But when I finished the collection I did something I’ve never done before: I turned back to the first poem and read them all again in one sitting. They are beautiful, intelligent, funny, painful, and I think will live with me for a long time.
September 3, 2017
Random line breaks
This is a collection of very personal poetry characterized mostly by random line breaks that make each poem seem a rush. Clauses pile on clauses, and every once in a while there is some sweet gem: a small fire, unexpected loneliness, etc.
This is a collection of very personal poetry characterized mostly by random line breaks that make each poem seem a rush. Clauses pile on clauses, and every once in a while there is some sweet gem: a small fire, unexpected loneliness, etc.
April 9, 2019
Voigt’s mastery of rhythm is so pleasing to read and she ends poems exceptionally well. Only a 3 because I was not as compelled by this collection as I was by other recent reads.
Favorites:
My mother
Noble dog
Lost boy
Bear
Lament
Favorites:
My mother
Noble dog
Lost boy
Bear
Lament
January 2, 2019
almost manic at times, her writing has a strange calm despite the chaos it thrives in. her line breaks are never where you would expect them to me, calls for very close reading.
October 9, 2022
Not my favorite style of poetry
April 18, 2024
She quotes Beethoven's 9th - Joyful Joyful we adore thee. But even giving her an additional star for that it is poor
August 2, 2024
There are poems in here better than entire books.
December 17, 2024
you are not "eschewing punctuation" you are making me feel like i am illiterate
May 25, 2014
Forget punctuation. Let the sentences build and rebuild in your head. The poem, "Roof" captures much of what each of these poems do--they praise the plain things--Milkmaid, Larch, Birch, Oak, Fox, Stone--things that we take for granted. And at the same time, they step away from what a thing is into a whole other sense of what a thing means or might mean. They talk about things and in that talk, they move from making statements to asking questions. They build an extended metaphor in which, in talking about things, we are also talking about something else--something that is like the thing being talked about and unlike it as well. And each sentence is strung on that tension of likeness and unlikeness.
"Roof" begins simply: "after a week of daily heavy snow I want to praise my roof"
But it ends talking about more than a roof with the line: "it takes what it needs/ from the lifesource and sheds the rest a useful/ example if I were starting over."
That "if I were starting over" opens every previous line as it flips the poem from being about a roof to being instead about how is my life like a roof and is being like a roof a good way of being?
Our lives both accumulate things (like a week of daily heavy snow) and shed things--failed marriages, kids grown and gone, personal disappointments. If you were starting your life over--what should you shed?
"Roof" begins simply: "after a week of daily heavy snow I want to praise my roof"
But it ends talking about more than a roof with the line: "it takes what it needs/ from the lifesource and sheds the rest a useful/ example if I were starting over."
That "if I were starting over" opens every previous line as it flips the poem from being about a roof to being instead about how is my life like a roof and is being like a roof a good way of being?
Our lives both accumulate things (like a week of daily heavy snow) and shed things--failed marriages, kids grown and gone, personal disappointments. If you were starting your life over--what should you shed?
August 7, 2016
These poems run together and run on, individual sentences sloshing against each other rushing to the next line. Something miraculous happens at the ends of these poems. There is a prosaic quality to the way they build themselves. And these incremental layers seem to slap against the end of the poem, all of their coats of color washing back over you in the silence. These poems reflect backward into childhood, or conversely, conceive the present as steeped in the backwash of the past. They are ornamental and mundane, worldly and strange. Voigt's latest work is a stunning departure from her usual methods while nevertheless awing the reader with her form.
November 17, 2013
Without punctuation the words look in both directions at times, which makes this fun reading. The timeless subjects of home, death, the animal world, spirituality all come out and then some. I really enjoyed "Sleep" "Owl" and "Fox." Each poem tells a story resonating into larger metaphor, as good poetry does.
August 7, 2015
Sometimes bewildering. At turns heartbreaking, other times hilarious. Sometimes both notes are struck in the same poem.
Brilliant art of the poetic line, great subject matter, masterful use of emotion and familial heartbreak without thin pandering. Voigt is a contemporary master.
Brilliant art of the poetic line, great subject matter, masterful use of emotion and familial heartbreak without thin pandering. Voigt is a contemporary master.
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