Thicket

by Melanie Janisse

Melanie Janisse-Barlow?s second book of poetry, Thicket, is a treatise on risk and the uncertainties of language in the modern world. In poems that gather and collect force page after page, Thicket negotiates humankind?s overwhelming desire to communicate, and the discomfort that comes with the process of entanglement/disentanglement. When Janisse-Barlow writes of a ?thousand awkward conversations,? she?s working away at the knots of language, unraveling and recombining the threads to create self-styled lyric essays. Thicket is a linguistic tour de force.

Genres: Poetry

104 pages, Paperback

Published September 16, 2019

Reviews

[Faizal Deen]

To enter the underbrush with her is to enter kingdoms of lyrical revelation. The compassion in this work lies in its ability to remind us all how we hold—and lose—each other.

[Dorothy Mahoney · Rating 5 out of 5]

The black cover with the round hole is genius as if the reader travels down the rabbit hole like
Alice in Wonderland to find a world of conjuring and divination. Janisse-Barlow includes notes to
Charliegirl, poems that use Windsor landmarks and postscripts to the river. Whether the abandoned hydrangea ever recovers, Janisse-Barlow's poetry blooms in strong images and
entanglements, thickening...