Even Shorn

by Isabel Duarte-Gray

Milton concludes "Lycidas," his great pastoral elegy, with the sudden appearance of the pastoral elegist, a youth with no audience but trees and running water: "Thus sang the uncouth swain to th'oaks and rills, / While the still morn went out with sandals grey." This moment epitomizes, for me, the Western tradition of pastoral poetry, and of pastoral elegy in particular. My collection began as a series of elegies, written for the many dead of my family, in the historically unremarkable Black Patch region of Western Kentucky. They, like Lycidas, often died with no witness but the natural world. They, like Lycidas, are deeply mourned. But unlike Lycidas, my aunts and uncles do not die innocently and are not naively mourned. The lived experience of the country-of poverty, of agriculture, of intense localit- does not exist outside time. It is cruel. It deserves its brutal elegy. Its songs with teeth

Genres: Poetry

72 pages, Paperback

First published May 4, 2021

Reviews

[Gabriel Noel · Rating 4 out of 5]

ARC given by Edelweiss+ for Honest Review

A really well written and lush collections of poems and prose.

Even Shorn is the type of book you want to read aloud to feel the complexity of the words and really connect with the author.

My favorite bits where the poems about her cousin.

[Vivienne Strauss · Rating 5 out of 5]

another great poet discovered through the podcast - Poetry off the shelf -

favorite passage from the poem "I said your daddy's gone"

the girl they got was
a osage orange no
good to nobody but
to toss from one boy to the other
til she split
in two

[Coren · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wish I knew where I picked ip this collection. Themes of nature, connection, inevitable betrayal. Really broken sentence structures- reminded me of old stories broken up around a campfire?