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Undertow: Poems
Winner of the 2007 Lexi Rudnitsky Poetry Prize.
This impressive debut is propelled by wanderlust, its music derived from the rumble of freight trains and the heave of ferries through literal and imaginative waterways. Whether set in Maine or in Arizona, in Ecuador or in Thailand, in waking or in dreaming, each poem resounds with the beauty and remoteness of its locality. Re-imaginings of travelogues by some notable explorers and naturalists, including Sir Walter Raleigh and Georg Eberhard Rumphius, underscore the collection's restless yearning for motion. Undertow marks the emergence of a distinctive new voice.
This impressive debut is propelled by wanderlust, its music derived from the rumble of freight trains and the heave of ferries through literal and imaginative waterways. Whether set in Maine or in Arizona, in Ecuador or in Thailand, in waking or in dreaming, each poem resounds with the beauty and remoteness of its locality. Re-imaginings of travelogues by some notable explorers and naturalists, including Sir Walter Raleigh and Georg Eberhard Rumphius, underscore the collection's restless yearning for motion. Undertow marks the emergence of a distinctive new voice.
- GenresPoetry
82 pages, Paperback
First published February 7, 2007
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
July 28, 2011
I don’t remember how or why I got Undertow: Poems. It won the 2007 Lexi Rudnitsky Poetry Prize, an annual prize for a woman poet who has yet to publish her first book.
The book is separated into four parts. Most clearly defined was the third section, which was about Thailand after the tsunami, where Shaw went to do relief work. The third was also my favorite part. Throughout the book, Shaw also addresses questions of identity, the topic of travel, and she includes many nature poems.
All in all, I think Shaw is a talented poet. Her structures were varied and interesting. The language is well above average and enlivening, her word choices often lush and rich. I did occasionally find it difficult to “enter” these poems. Sometimes the diction changes and throws me, as in the first poem, “Caution, Freight.”
In the river of my dream I’m ankle-deep
in the water’s muddy froth, my cuffs rolled up. A manatee or alligator
swims at me and rises, hugely brown. It’s the size of a submarine
with dull, enormous eyes. You call it hell dog and begin
to flee. The narrator of the dream informs: The hell dog rises from the river,
fixes its eyes on the head of its target prey. I’m about
to miss my flight for Panama, having dallied too long in your arms. (...)
That’s the first half of the poem, and “having dallied too long in your arms” doesn’t seem to belong in the picture. It sounds affected and old-fashioned and throws me out of the poem.
Shaw has a couple of favored devices, the first being direct metaphor, e.g. “The sun is a finger pushing through the plastic sheet of sky.” (khao lak paradise resort) The poem “Vision” is pretty much composed of direct metaphor, including “the crow is an invisible hand,” “thaw is a mourning dove’s cry,” “the ear is a tree of blood,” “her feet are a quiver of knives,” “her tracks are toothprints.” This makes her poems feel overworked at times.
Another structure Shaw likes is the noun-of-noun structure, e.g. “cave of snow,”temple of grey light,” “furl of dream,” “gobbet of a heart,” “cage of limbs,” “accident of sweat.” I suppose it’s not really fair to pull these out of context. Often they flow just fine, but this phrasing occurs frequently and I sometimes wished she’d find another way to express her meaning. The book’s last poem, “In the Jungle,” which is three pages long but mostly because of spacing and indenting, includes seven such phrasings. Overtly a nature poem, “In the Jungle” is about language and communication. Here’s the beginning:
Beneath the veil of moss and vine
I cut for you a pretext
.. of translation.
And here’s “Hymn,” which is in the first section of the book, which I liked.
Hymn
The pink troll of our decade snickers from under its bridge
as the country goes crazy for jesus and the grey men
in the alley start to stink. I am humming under my breath in the key of doubt
as you pray to the god of washrooms, make us clean.
Each day's bitter ribbon and its calculus of light. I sing o bastard of my heart
be still. Your god is the god of mirrors, and the house a paper wasp builds
is paper. There are broken slats in every tiny thing. The pupa
and its carapace. The celery salt, the stalk. The way my birchy skin
peels off. Your hennaed hand. Your hand. How grief runs
through me like a pack of eels. Silver and colloidal,
the tides have seen us coming and turn back.
Like them, our work is breakage. To plunder to from fro. Inside us
something pliant, soiled. Bearing the dent of thumbs.
xxxx
Many more poems from the book and elsewhere are available here: http://anneshaw.org/Work.html
The book is separated into four parts. Most clearly defined was the third section, which was about Thailand after the tsunami, where Shaw went to do relief work. The third was also my favorite part. Throughout the book, Shaw also addresses questions of identity, the topic of travel, and she includes many nature poems.
All in all, I think Shaw is a talented poet. Her structures were varied and interesting. The language is well above average and enlivening, her word choices often lush and rich. I did occasionally find it difficult to “enter” these poems. Sometimes the diction changes and throws me, as in the first poem, “Caution, Freight.”
In the river of my dream I’m ankle-deep
in the water’s muddy froth, my cuffs rolled up. A manatee or alligator
swims at me and rises, hugely brown. It’s the size of a submarine
with dull, enormous eyes. You call it hell dog and begin
to flee. The narrator of the dream informs: The hell dog rises from the river,
fixes its eyes on the head of its target prey. I’m about
to miss my flight for Panama, having dallied too long in your arms. (...)
That’s the first half of the poem, and “having dallied too long in your arms” doesn’t seem to belong in the picture. It sounds affected and old-fashioned and throws me out of the poem.
Shaw has a couple of favored devices, the first being direct metaphor, e.g. “The sun is a finger pushing through the plastic sheet of sky.” (khao lak paradise resort) The poem “Vision” is pretty much composed of direct metaphor, including “the crow is an invisible hand,” “thaw is a mourning dove’s cry,” “the ear is a tree of blood,” “her feet are a quiver of knives,” “her tracks are toothprints.” This makes her poems feel overworked at times.
Another structure Shaw likes is the noun-of-noun structure, e.g. “cave of snow,”temple of grey light,” “furl of dream,” “gobbet of a heart,” “cage of limbs,” “accident of sweat.” I suppose it’s not really fair to pull these out of context. Often they flow just fine, but this phrasing occurs frequently and I sometimes wished she’d find another way to express her meaning. The book’s last poem, “In the Jungle,” which is three pages long but mostly because of spacing and indenting, includes seven such phrasings. Overtly a nature poem, “In the Jungle” is about language and communication. Here’s the beginning:
Beneath the veil of moss and vine
I cut for you a pretext
.. of translation.
And here’s “Hymn,” which is in the first section of the book, which I liked.
Hymn
The pink troll of our decade snickers from under its bridge
as the country goes crazy for jesus and the grey men
in the alley start to stink. I am humming under my breath in the key of doubt
as you pray to the god of washrooms, make us clean.
Each day's bitter ribbon and its calculus of light. I sing o bastard of my heart
be still. Your god is the god of mirrors, and the house a paper wasp builds
is paper. There are broken slats in every tiny thing. The pupa
and its carapace. The celery salt, the stalk. The way my birchy skin
peels off. Your hennaed hand. Your hand. How grief runs
through me like a pack of eels. Silver and colloidal,
the tides have seen us coming and turn back.
Like them, our work is breakage. To plunder to from fro. Inside us
something pliant, soiled. Bearing the dent of thumbs.
xxxx
Many more poems from the book and elsewhere are available here: http://anneshaw.org/Work.html
September 18, 2008
I pursued the book, because we published one of the poems from the book in Gulf Coast. And at the beginning of the book, I was very enthusiastic about where it might be taking me. There is some amazing work with identity, and how difficult it might be for this poet to have found hers. However, the strong lyric voice that comes in the beginning isn't able to smooth over some of the rougher edges that emerge when multiple sources are smashed into one poem. The book becomes too much argument, and not enough lyric, for my tastes.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews