Food for the Winter

by Geraldine Connolly

In Food for the Winter, Geraldine Connolly recovers the lost world of childhood in the years of small-town America following World War II. The prevailing imagery is that of fire, the fire of bombing recollected, the fire of Roman Catholicism, of rifles and steel mills, candles and cigarettes, fires both intellectual and physical, fires of emotion and spirit. Connolly’s collection fixes the past and its losses in place then moves from girlhood themes into the emergence of womanhood and its passions. The book’s real subject is love and the rich and varied possibilities of human relationships. The rites of passages become more than those of an individual life, achieving an identity that both records a particular moment in time yet transcends a particular human body and names us all as suffers of experience and enjoyers of perceptions.

Genres: Poetry

47 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1990

Reviews

[Courtney LeBlanc · Rating 4 out of 5]

Poems about family life, from a child's perspective, and adolescent's perspective, and then finally from a mother's perspective.

from The Heart's Curtain: "We opened it, saw everything. Who could / forget the avalanche of lilies, the coffin / sailing like a dark ship among them."

from At Mimi's Style Shop: "If beauty hurts like this, then / how must love feel.. In the women's / magazines, I see dangerous examples."