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Enough
Kris Bigalk's second full-length collection, Enough, traces the interplay between the experience of codependency and the myths of Echo and Narcissus. Lyrical, raw, and honest, these poems invite us to consider what it means to be satisfied, how to make peace with each other and ourselves, and how to know when enough is enough.
88 pages, Paperback
Published October 31, 2019
About the author
Kris Bigalk
3 books69 followersKris Bigalk is the author of Repeat the Flesh in Numbers, a poetry collection; a free reader's/teacher's guide is available at http://krisbigalk.com. Her poetry has appeared in The WaterStone Review, the cream city review, The New York Quarterly, Silk Road, and other journals. She lives near Minneapolis, where she serves as Director of Creative Writing at Normandale Community College.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
November 25, 2020
I have often wondered how to write poems about ardent love and others about the ache of lost love. In the poetry collection, Enough, Kris Bigalk puts on a clinic of how to create poems of true matters of both the bountiful and besieged heart. Some of her poems are laden with sensuality, yet others shiver with the elements of loss. Encompassing the natural world, her poetic images shimmer and cut. At times, she explores a manmade world, where indifference and lack of commitment must be muzzled like an male alpha wolf's carnivorous snout. Bigalk, the poet, communicates the human condition, through keen female eyes, with astute observation and transparent candor. Often in this world of men nicking their faces with razors, relationships are not attended to with preventive maintenance, leaving love unrequited. By the end of this magnificent collection of poems, I was given the wherewithal to tend to my own garden of love, reexamining my relationship while navigating a better course, thanks to Bigalk's open-throated honesty. I recommend this book to those in love and those out of love. A must read!
March 23, 2021
Exploring the Multifaceted "Enough" in Kris Bigalk's Lyrical Reimagining of Myth
More Than a Word
About the Book:
Title: Enough
Author: Kris Bigalk
Page Length: 88
Publication Date: October 31, 2019
Publisher: NYQ Books
Dates Read: March 5, 2021 - March 23, 2021
Rating: 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟
Synopsis:
Enough is a scintillating collection of individual poems that reads brilliantly as one arc, recasting the Echo/Narcissus story in terms of modern love. It is enthralling to see how the single word "enough" functions as the perfect conceit and duality for Kris Bigalk's latest collection. The poems move from the intense sensuality of a relationship in which the desire the speaker feels for the "you" is never adequately reciprocated or enough, to the unsuccessful attempts at finding a mere satisfaction or what will suffice, to the speaker, heartbroken, finally having enough and working toward letting go. Accentuating this journey of desire, loss and longing, then contemplation and recovery is the myth of Echo and Narcissus, which ribbons its way both overtly and subtly through the collection. However, Bigalk recapitulates the myth, allowing the speaker a path to healing, thus refusing to reduce the speaker to complete despair over unrequited love, as Ovid does, turning a heartbroken nymph to a mere echo.
- Adam Vines, editor of Birmingham Poetry Review
(From Kris Bigalk's website)
Review:
Kris Bigalk's Enough is a masterful collection that lives up to its compelling synopsis. The brilliance lies in how the individual poems coalesce into a powerful narrative arc, tracing the complexities of modern love through the lens of the Echo and Narcissus myth. Bigalk's exploration of the multifaceted meaning of "enough" - from insatiable desire to the eventual point of letting go - is both insightful and emotionally resonant.
The included analysis of specific poems, such as "What Your Hands Held Before They Held Me," "Two Seconds Poem," and "My Narcissus Poem," offers a fascinating glimpse into Bigalk's craft and thematic concerns. My engagement with the author's commentary and the connection to poetic techniques like list poems, brevity, and contemporary rhyme enriches the reading experience.
I appreciate Bigalk's work by contextualizing it within broader poetic traditions and highlighting my own learning process. References to poets like Kim Addonizio, Joy Harjo, and Natalie Diaz demonstrate a deep engagement with poetic craft and provide valuable insights into the techniques employed in Enough.
Ultimately, Enough is a deeply moving and expertly crafted collection that offers a fresh perspective on a timeless myth. Bigalk's skillful use of language, coupled with the emotional depth of the poems, makes this a highly recommended read for poetry lovers.
Poetry Collections Tracing Modern Context with Myths/Fairytales/etc.:
Natalie Diaz's Postcolonial Love Poem: While deeply rooted in Indigenous experience, Diaz's work often subtly engages with and subverts traditional myths and narratives, creating a powerful contemporary dialogue.
Madeline Miller's Circe and The Song of Achilles (Prose with Poetic Elements): While novels, Miller's lyrical prose and focus on reimagining Greek myths for a modern audience resonate with this theme.
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Do you have a fairytale or myth, or retelling? Tell me in the comments and add to my Storygraph Challenge (https://app.thestorygraph.com/reading...)!
---
You can find Enough on Bookshop.org (https://bookshop.org/a/112672/9781630...) and Support Local Bookstores!
Disclosure: All thoughts are my own. Also: When you buy a book from the Bookshop.org links I provide, you will either provide me or an independent bookshop. I support a portion of the affiliate sales if you use them to buy a book I recommend!
More Than a Word
About the Book:
Title: Enough
Author: Kris Bigalk
Page Length: 88
Publication Date: October 31, 2019
Publisher: NYQ Books
Dates Read: March 5, 2021 - March 23, 2021
Rating: 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟
Synopsis:
Enough is a scintillating collection of individual poems that reads brilliantly as one arc, recasting the Echo/Narcissus story in terms of modern love. It is enthralling to see how the single word "enough" functions as the perfect conceit and duality for Kris Bigalk's latest collection. The poems move from the intense sensuality of a relationship in which the desire the speaker feels for the "you" is never adequately reciprocated or enough, to the unsuccessful attempts at finding a mere satisfaction or what will suffice, to the speaker, heartbroken, finally having enough and working toward letting go. Accentuating this journey of desire, loss and longing, then contemplation and recovery is the myth of Echo and Narcissus, which ribbons its way both overtly and subtly through the collection. However, Bigalk recapitulates the myth, allowing the speaker a path to healing, thus refusing to reduce the speaker to complete despair over unrequited love, as Ovid does, turning a heartbroken nymph to a mere echo.
- Adam Vines, editor of Birmingham Poetry Review
(From Kris Bigalk's website)
Review:
Kris Bigalk's Enough is a masterful collection that lives up to its compelling synopsis. The brilliance lies in how the individual poems coalesce into a powerful narrative arc, tracing the complexities of modern love through the lens of the Echo and Narcissus myth. Bigalk's exploration of the multifaceted meaning of "enough" - from insatiable desire to the eventual point of letting go - is both insightful and emotionally resonant.
The included analysis of specific poems, such as "What Your Hands Held Before They Held Me," "Two Seconds Poem," and "My Narcissus Poem," offers a fascinating glimpse into Bigalk's craft and thematic concerns. My engagement with the author's commentary and the connection to poetic techniques like list poems, brevity, and contemporary rhyme enriches the reading experience.
I appreciate Bigalk's work by contextualizing it within broader poetic traditions and highlighting my own learning process. References to poets like Kim Addonizio, Joy Harjo, and Natalie Diaz demonstrate a deep engagement with poetic craft and provide valuable insights into the techniques employed in Enough.
Ultimately, Enough is a deeply moving and expertly crafted collection that offers a fresh perspective on a timeless myth. Bigalk's skillful use of language, coupled with the emotional depth of the poems, makes this a highly recommended read for poetry lovers.
Poetry Collections Tracing Modern Context with Myths/Fairytales/etc.:
Natalie Diaz's Postcolonial Love Poem: While deeply rooted in Indigenous experience, Diaz's work often subtly engages with and subverts traditional myths and narratives, creating a powerful contemporary dialogue.
Madeline Miller's Circe and The Song of Achilles (Prose with Poetic Elements): While novels, Miller's lyrical prose and focus on reimagining Greek myths for a modern audience resonate with this theme.
---
Do you have a fairytale or myth, or retelling? Tell me in the comments and add to my Storygraph Challenge (https://app.thestorygraph.com/reading...)!
---
You can find Enough on Bookshop.org (https://bookshop.org/a/112672/9781630...) and Support Local Bookstores!
Disclosure: All thoughts are my own. Also: When you buy a book from the Bookshop.org links I provide, you will either provide me or an independent bookshop. I support a portion of the affiliate sales if you use them to buy a book I recommend!
September 13, 2026
3/5
9/12 of my self imposed “buy a random poetry book every month from my local indie bookstores” challenge. I don't know--maybe I'm just not the right person for this book. I was hooked in by the promise of a poetry collection to do with the myths of Echo and Narcissus, and while those poems did tend to be my favorites, they were also pretty lightly scattered through the rest of the collection. I wanted more of that. It wasn't really a solid throughline.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews