Horizon Note

by Robin Behn

Winner of the 2001 Brittingham Prize in Poetry, selected by Mark Doty A son is born too early, as if coming up over the horizon before his own dawn. An elderly father lingers at life's other horizon. In language dense and clear, playful and somber, and with a formal exactitude and emotional amplitude suggestive of her own musical training, Behn traverses these horizons with a musician's as well as a poet's ear.



"Horizon Note turns speech into music, even as it resists and questions the slippery, beloved, difficult stuff it's made of. Behn makes live, breathing art out of language's terrible limitations, the paradoxical ways it both enables and betrays us."-Mark Doty



Author Robin Behn is the author of two previous collections of poetry, Paper Bird and The Red Hour, and co-editor of The Practice of Writing Exercise From Poets Who Teach. She directs the M.F.A. Program in Creative Writing at the University of Alabama.

Genres: Poetry

Hardcover

First published August 11, 2001

Reviews

[Jacqueline Gordon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Particularly, the poems that really stand out in this book are the poet’s reflections on her father’s struggle with dementia and aging. Absolutely stunning. The musical imagery was also a pleasant surprise.

[Ryan Bollenbach · Rating 5 out of 5]

A poignant binding of two related narratives: a child born, and a parent dying.

These poems have a sense of cohesiveness that is made through the moving interplay and juxtaposition between the concerns which naturally arise from the two narratives described above.

Because of the discursive nature of this book, I feel that it is better read in full than read for single poems as each section of the book tackles some aspect of both the child and parent's journey, whether it be something as physical as swimming, or as intellectual as learning (or forgetting) how to talk.

After reading the whole book through in two very long sittings, the ending poem was particularly powerful to me as it engages with every poem in the volume before it and makes this volume collectively encapsulates the waning and waxing of life with clarity and wonder.

[Caitlin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thanks to a recommendation from my poet aunt, bumped into this stunning poetry. There are at least a few really special gems in here that anyone who knows anyone with dementia-related disease, and anyone who doesn't, should probably read.

[Andy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Disappointing.