This Is The Homeland

by Mary Hickman

Poetry. Mary Hickman's THIS IS THE HOMELAND consists of eight poetic sequences written over a ten-year period, begun when she worked as a surgical assistant in open-heart surgeries. The sequences are linked by an attention to the visceral elements of language and by an exploration of the themes of health, transformation, desire, and identity. Hickman charts the precarious and ecstatic response of consciousness surrendering itself to language and experience, a vertigo in which the self is called back to itself and the world through losing itself. These poems are as much about love as loss, therefore—elegies to times, places, and people whose presences sear and haunt the poems. Using the teeth of language to grapple with the exhilarating passage of time, THIS IS THE HOMELAND presents the deft maneuverings of a vibrant new poetic intelligence—sensuous, sensitive, and awake.

Genres: Poetry

80 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2015

Reviews

[Allison · Rating 4 out of 5]

A haunting, lyric collection with a palpably evocative mood! So pleasantly strange that a collection titled "This is the Homeland" can evoke such alien scenery. The language is alive and energized. Hickman did a masterful job weaving together the familiar ("I loosen, gently, / my work hair from the bun; / I release my / loose change from the skirt"), the visceral ("beaten-- his duodenum, colon, / blind intestine and appendix, destined / for heat, they blush"), and the bizarre ("we'd been told she could be read by ear"). A charged collection!

[Melissa · Rating 3 out of 5]

This poem is one of my favorites in here. I love the freshness and excitement in the voice, and the clarity. I also really loved "The City."

Woodchopper

A word of warning for people with bad hearts:
If you are very stiff
skipping to hell your feet apart
if you have abdominal fat
& thighs
thighs! you'll grow old you'll grow
pink in a position we can't expect
& force your habit at the waist.

Thumb held straight, your other fingers make
a spire. With one hand nothing's held
captive. With both hands, advancing,
open the gates, see into pines.

[Leonard · Rating 3 out of 5]

Another collection of poems from the Ahsahta Press