Ghost Child of the Atalanta Bloom

by Rebecca Aronson

In ''Ghost Child of the Atalanta Bloom'' Rebecca Aronson combines myth and memory, history and landscape, dream and the everyday in arresting, painterly poems that sweep the reader beyond the ordinary. With a practiced hand Aronson crafts shapely poems in which no word is wasted. In fact, nothing is wasted, and Aronson's poems redeem all manner of powerful images and experiences from time's grasp, forming a new mythology out of the raw material of her life and imagination.

Genres: Poetry

80 pages, Paperback

Published April 4, 2017

Reviews

[Alarie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I like authors to pull me into a poem or book immediately, and the titles of Aronson’s first two poems do that: “I Was the Girl Who Set the Field on Fire” and “My Father Robs and Etruscan Grave.” How can you not want to hear more? Her playfulness and humor continue to show through in poems like “The Museum of Inattention,” in which forgotten sweaters, lost gloves, and more substantial losses of life are on display and the exit is invisible.

Other poems are less accessible than I prefer. I had to run after them, back up, reread; however, I’m still giving the book 5 stars for the richness of language and metaphor. Here are a few descriptions I read again simply to savor them

“There were plastic chairs,
womanly with their smooth white arms…”
(“I Was the Girl Who Set the Field on Fire”)


“…the breath in my throat rushing out
like bats, those same wings
gone skimming the night winds now as then.
(“My Father Robs an Etruscan Grave”)


“Maybe I believed that my special power
was to disappear through my own front door,

leave a space as blank as the line next to church
on the real estate questionnaire.”

(“Town”)


“The beach behind us
became a lost dog, its soggy smell

pleading for scraps. . . .”
(“Oyster Bar”)

[Janice · Rating 5 out of 5]

Poems in Rebecca Aronson’s second collection, Ghost Child of the Atalanta Bloom, range from carefully observed chronicles of daily events to deep meditations on the meaning of life. Every poem is a faceted gem, and the collection as a whole glows with surprising and apt imagery and phrasing.

A couple of my favorite lines: “raised on sweet/ water and the musky flesh of clean-shot/ beasts” and “I wake from a hot, black sleep/ to find the sun, a man-hole cover,/ stomped down tight.”

Aronson's work is mystical, even as it is grounded in the here and now and personal experience, with rich passages like this one from the title poem, “Imagine that some days even the grass/ could be an engine of desire. The tassels which flash/ in the wind so the whole field mirrors/ the sugar running in your veins.”


Ghost Child of the Atalanta Bloom received the 2016 Orison Poetry Prize, and Aronson is a gifted poet whose work can be mined for new delights with each reading.

[Andrew Shutes-David · Rating 4 out of 5]

poems from "the girl who set the field on fire" (heck if I know how to summarize them) // earthy, evocative, opaque // some obscure images of violence or darkness // 4.0: 4.4, 2.0, 2.0, 4.5, 3.7 // on every third poem or so i underlined a word, phrase, or line that struck me as true, profound, or elegantly captured, and then on the bottom of those same pages, i wrote "I really like the images in this poem--I only wish I understood the poem."

SUMMARY // 3 ADJECTIVES // WARNINGS FOR KIDS // RATING: SETTING RATING, PLOT RATING, CHARACTER RATING, WRITING RATING, IDEAS RATING // OTHER WORDS

[Lisa S · Rating 4 out of 5]

This isn't the usual style of poetry I would pick up off the shelf, but I still found it very enjoyable - beautiful, scary snippets of life, slowed down and viewed with an inquisitive eye. Quite lovely.

[Pam Van Dyk Writes · Rating 5 out of 5]

Aronson's collection sparkles with things both light and dark. It is a balance of desire and withholding. And there is an aching want reflected in the collection that reminds us all that we are only human. This is a collection to return to again and again.

[Nina]

I purchased this book at a reading, after enjoying the musicality of the poems Aronson read. The book won the 2016 Orison Poetry Prize, and was a finalist for the 2017 New Mexico Book Award. The title intrigues yet mystifies me. Atalanta is a form of azalea, but that doesn’t seem to fit. In mythology, Atalanta was abandoned by her father, who wanted a son. Atalanta is also a virgin huntress who, when ordered to marry, said she would marry the man who could win a footrace against her. Part of the myth is that Aphrodite gave her suitor three gold apples to drop in Atalanta’s path. As she stopped to retrieve the apples, he won the race. This seems a more likely interpretation of the title, especially with the surrealistic aspects of many of the poems, which are filled with fire, flood, and dreams.

Aronson’s poetry is a slight stretch for me, certainly not incomprehensible, but just a smidge out of my reach. Her wordplay is terrific, and the sounds and lilt of her lines are quite enjoyable. However, I found some of the poems a bit confusing, leaving me with a “huh” reaction.

“Dream Dictionary Abecedarian” is one of the best abcedarians I’ve ever read. This is a form where each line starts with a letter of the alphabet, A-Z, and many times the poem seems to me contrived. However, this one flows, and the form is unobtrusive, which meets my judgment of a good form poem.

Another favorite is “The Museum of Inattention”:
Here is a room of forgotten sweaters,
the orange silk scarf left at the Vancouver airport,
single gloves leaping from pockets,

As I re-read the book while writing this review, I appreciate Aronson’s skill with language and images. I think this is a book to read and ingest slowly.