[Line]

by Mischelle B. Anthony

From the book:

Jersey Shore

That childhood hotel smell
I thought magical,
but now the ashtray
on the headboard
glints and I know the old
cigarette aroma of the made-over-
the sixties modern wood that manages
to look plastic, the nylon shower curtain
that jelly fishes up my beach-ready leg,
glossy like the sting-ray's belly
in the sunrise, the stray labels
blowing in the sand hills.
Something about the shore
and my life settles into the waves.
The haunts fade away in the foam
and all I've got-
all I've got
is the sky and the horizon,
not even mine
and it's good.

52 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2011

About the author

Mischelle Anthony is Associate Professor of English at Wilkes University. In addition to poetry, she also specializes in eighteenth-century women writers of gothic and sentimental prose. Mischelle is founder and coordinator of Luzerne County's Poetry In Transit program that places local writing and visual art on public buses.

Reviews

[Harold Ackerman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mischelle Anthony's [Line] (Foothills Publishing 2011) offers gritty, honest poems, which hit home like a documentary film or a good b&w image, but present us with feelings we don't often get from those media. "Fracture," for instance, addresses the speaker's grandmother with affection laced with irony:

A nurse attends your heart.
You sum up, "My husband died
this month three years ago"--
a new date to tick off
on your free bank calendar's
two-inch square. Weather,
birthdays, illness, death. What else
is there in this world?

To which the speaker answers, "Everything."

We should say right out, that while we generally do not presume the voice of a poem is that of the author, these poems seem highly autobiographical, tightly connected to the author's own family and experience, as when she mocks her grandmother's voice:

"Mischelle. Mischelle. Mischelle."
Whose name do you say now
when they don't rush
to your side? Since you've moved
from homemade prison to rehab
hell, has anything changed? [ . . . ]
It's a refusal of life that you rooted
in us.

Writing about herself in "My Country Body," Anthony says

I blame church communion--
those heavy trays levitated
over shellacked pews and perms

and a few lines later tells how her own head feels heavy on her shoulders, how she desires relief from this weight.

I remember the week we got
new, lighter communion trays.
We almost tossed them behind us.
They were so easy, so light.

You'll read an early poem such as "Mom Stood on her Head in the Dining Room" just because it startles and delights you, then continue through poems that speak frankly of family, marriage, and personal cares noticing the poet's visualization of details and, frequently, the way she reaches in and pulls out a final phrase, as in the title poem. In that one, after first describing the reading of the lines on her hands, she concludes

My grandfather bends like an autumn leaf,
my grandmother's palm mirrors my own

straight across her rare, impatient skin.


Read [Line], especially, for the way Anthony grapples with these experiences and their continuing weight in her life using spare language and often brief, tight lines: in "Fence," "Jersey Shore," "Scar," for example, or "Highway West." She addresses sometimes hurtful situations honestly and without gloss or generalization. Sometimes irony is her way. Can irony satisfy and complete a meditation? Yes, repeatedly in these poems. Read them.

[Marcie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is beautiful. Its poetry is brutally honest and I feel everyone will find something in this collection to connect to on some level. I look forward to reading it many more times.