Between Hurricanes

by Jennifer Rane Hancock

Poetry. Women's Studies. Book of poems arising from the ephemeral sand islands of the Texas Gulf Coast and the wild child Australian outback where Hancock was raised by itinerant artists. From the poem, September, 1976, Calm , "…the girls swayed their terrycloth hips/between hurricanes/and held the railings and crooned/to the dolphins that all was safe…" The poems hearken to a childhood of an almost mythological upbringing. From the milieu of that youth, the poems branch out into the wide world, with stops at the Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Norway; the HAARP antennae array in Gakona, Alaska, a view of Anne Sexton's checkbook in a museum, to the difficult times in New Orleans after Katrina. The book embodies the hard journey into the adult world where, despite everything, the poet comes to grips with being alive in the world. The last lines of the final poem, "…If this had been a test the air/would be alive with sirens/and intent, the whooping cranes/startled but resolute,/the promise of anything/redolent with oleander."

Genres: Poetry

112 pages, Paperback

Published December 10, 2015

Reviews

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's a really beautiful book. Lithic Press did a great job putting the poems on the page. I also like the black-and-white photos that separate the three sections. The poems themselves were always good but rarely knocked my socks off. My favorites were:

"My Parents' Old Acting Troupe, The Alpha Omega Players, Comes to Town" (a bit too long a title, imho)
"Mother My Worry Stone"
"The Bigot's Funeral"
"St. Mary's Orphanage: Galveston Island September 8, 1900" (again, clunky title)
"The Almost"