The Doom Weaver

by Georgia Popoff

Georgia Popoff is a collector of discarded fragments, considered tarnished but envisioned anew in the palm of her words. She doesn't clean or repair the shards. She moments deeply in what is there and exhumes footholds in sorrow. The action itself, when enabled with vast passion, is poetry. The Doom Weaver is "a shawl/on the warp of the night." Quraysh Ali Lansana These poems of plain statement and often incandescent images, of ironic detachment and helpless commitment, offer canny assessments of life and lives, love and family. They move with a dancer's grace out to the edge and back in again. The Doom Weaver is an impressive collection by a poet of real accomplishment.Charles Martin The Doom Weaver includes poems on a wide variety of themes. Georgia Popoff gives us a vivid portrait of children watching a one-armed man mowing short sleeve flagging/the summer breeze. We see her great-grandmother who, rather than die a slow death from cancer, took control, wading into snow./Her nightgown sucked/against her ribs. We listen to a lover who wants to preserve a part of her beloved's body like a relic from a I kissed you/finger by finger like rosary beads./I wanted to lop one off, keep it in my pocket/for when I grow weak, like a rabbit's foot. This is a bold and engaging volume.Ellen Bass

67 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 2008

Reviews

[Katie · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Doom Weaver is good, but the poems often make no move past the personal, leaving the reader confused as the personal remains insular, and a little muddled. While Popoff clearly celebrates her poetic mothers(she has epigraphs from Clifton and Lourde), some of the poems potentially coopt the experience of others, something that makes poetry read as false. Popoff plays with form and style – narrative, haiku-inspired, pantoums, tankas – and at her best, the poems are unusual and surprising. At the worst, however, they are tired and predictable.