What do you think?
Rate this book
Hallowed: New and Selected Poems
Selections from four previous books along with twenty-four new poems: a celebration of poetic endurance and artistry of aging.--
- GenresPoetry
108 pages, Paperback
Published September 1, 2017
1 person is currently reading
160 people want to read
About the author
Patricia Fargnoli
12 books21 followersPatricia Fargnoli is a former NH Poet Laureate (term: 12/06-03/09). The author of 5 award-winning books of poetry and 3 chapbooks, she's been awarded The May Swenson Book Award (judged by Mary Oliver), The NH Jane Kenyon Literary Award for an Outstanding Book of Poetry, ForeWords Silver Poetry Book Award, the Shelia Mooton Book Award, The Frost Foundation Award, an honorary BFA from The NH Institute of Art, and a Macdowell fellowship.
Her work has been published widely in journals such as: Poetry, Massachusetts Review, North American Review, Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, Harvard Review, Rattle, Nimrod and others.
She has taught private poetry classes and in Elderhostels and the Keene State College Lifelong Learning Program. And is available for manuscript critiquing and private tutorials.
A retired social-worker, psycho-therapist, she lives in Walpole, NH
Her work has been published widely in journals such as: Poetry, Massachusetts Review, North American Review, Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, Harvard Review, Rattle, Nimrod and others.
She has taught private poetry classes and in Elderhostels and the Keene State College Lifelong Learning Program. And is available for manuscript critiquing and private tutorials.
A retired social-worker, psycho-therapist, she lives in Walpole, NH
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
January 12, 2022
I've been a fan of Fargnoli for many years, so many years that my reviews of Necessary Light and Then, Something were not here on Goodreads. I've added 5 stars for each of those, which were excerpted in this collection of new and selected poems. I can identify with her poems of worry about aging, love when poets take me on their travels, and while not overly fond of nature poems, she makes me love those, too. She covers all sorts of moods from wistfulness and grief to awe and playfulness.
I was particularly touched by a poem about a black bear, with red tags in its ears, who visited Fargnoli's daughter's koi pond with her adolescent cub many times one summer. Here's stanza two of four:
"You would have thought
she was hungry and would go after
the fish but she must have only
been entranced by them
because she didn't wade into the pond,
though she could have.
She only came quietly with her cub
and sat there for a long time watching
while the Ghost Koi, the Butterfly Koi,
the dark Goshiki and the Bekko
swam unknowing, undisturbed."
Unfortunately the poem's ending is disturbing for animal lovers.
I'm an art lover and could relate to the special kinship the poet felt with a sculpture she spent some quality time with in Italy ("Penitent Magdalene, Donatello," final stanza):
"And, yet, somehow she seemed beyond grief,
beyond suffering, her body, the dark wood,
gilded so that it held both light
and shadow, not beautiful, but beautiful
in her humanness....she imprinted me
with her mystery, she threw some bond
like a rope across the small space between us
and yes art can do this
so that now, decades later, she remains
bound to me, a presence in my body.
I could also relate to "How This Poet Thinks."
"I don't think
like lawyers, quick in the mind,
rapid as a rat-a-tat-tat,
or academics, who pile logic up,
like wood to get them through winter."
She concludes,
"I think in tortoise-time,
dream time, limbic time,
like a waterfall, a moth's wing,
like snow – that soundless, that white."
I was particularly touched by a poem about a black bear, with red tags in its ears, who visited Fargnoli's daughter's koi pond with her adolescent cub many times one summer. Here's stanza two of four:
"You would have thought
she was hungry and would go after
the fish but she must have only
been entranced by them
because she didn't wade into the pond,
though she could have.
She only came quietly with her cub
and sat there for a long time watching
while the Ghost Koi, the Butterfly Koi,
the dark Goshiki and the Bekko
swam unknowing, undisturbed."
Unfortunately the poem's ending is disturbing for animal lovers.
I'm an art lover and could relate to the special kinship the poet felt with a sculpture she spent some quality time with in Italy ("Penitent Magdalene, Donatello," final stanza):
"And, yet, somehow she seemed beyond grief,
beyond suffering, her body, the dark wood,
gilded so that it held both light
and shadow, not beautiful, but beautiful
in her humanness....she imprinted me
with her mystery, she threw some bond
like a rope across the small space between us
and yes art can do this
so that now, decades later, she remains
bound to me, a presence in my body.
I could also relate to "How This Poet Thinks."
"I don't think
like lawyers, quick in the mind,
rapid as a rat-a-tat-tat,
or academics, who pile logic up,
like wood to get them through winter."
She concludes,
"I think in tortoise-time,
dream time, limbic time,
like a waterfall, a moth's wing,
like snow – that soundless, that white."
August 19, 2022
It’s hard to find the words to describe how much I enjoyed Fargnoli’s collection. My father (who has quite a lovely curated few shelves of poetry in his office), gifted me this book a few years ago. It’s one I keep returning to again and again, and I just know I’ll continue to do so for as long as I live.
October 6, 2024
A superb selection of poems by an author who didn't start writing until she was a senior citizen. She had me from the first page, and I experienced something I thought was gone from my life, the discovery of a writer that makes you want to go buy ALL their books. Which is what I've done, and I've not been disappointed. I think this book might speak more to older people (I'm 69).
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews