Summoned: poems

by Margaret Hasse

In her new collection of poetry, Hasse explores the sorrows and delights of daily life through narratives and ruminations enlivened by her lightning-quick imagination and her care in choosing just the right detail to achieve the desired effect. Her attention ranges widely, from the distant past, seen through a filter of nostalgia (as in "Summer of Love, 1967" and "Marijuana") to the humor and acceptance of aging that enliven the present, as in "Medicare Birthday" and "After a Fall." Alongside such descriptive pieces we also come upon moments of reverie, as when, in "Summoning My Dead Mother," Hasse inexplicably sees her mother at the kitchen table eating toast with honey―not her typical breakfast. The poem ends as mysteriously as it "she's insubstantial as wind / that stirs a willow tree / washing its long hair in lake water / and blooming for the bees."
The natural world, from butterflies to moose, makes repeated appearances; more challenging is the sequence of poems scattered here and there throughout the volume that Hasse labels "Another Day of Being White." Being the adoptive mother of two African American children gives her an unusually deep and personal perspective on the crosscurrents of inequity and strife that continue to weaken our social fabric.
Summoned is Hasse's sixth full-length volume. As poet Connie Wanek "Where else will we find―not necessarily answers, but the right questions? Are people good? Is there a God? How far does empathy extend? In Hasse's work, humor and grief often share the same neighborhood, street, house, room, soul."

100 pages, Paperback

Published October 15, 2021

About the author

MARGARET HASSE grew up on the edge of Vermillion, South Dakota, and traveled west to college at Stanford University where she received a B.A. in English. Later, back in the Midwest, she received an M.A. in English from the University of Minnesota, also in English.

Margaret is author of five collections of poems: She is author of six collections of poetry: Summonded, Between Us, Earth’s Appetite, Milk and Tides, In a Sheep’s Eye, Darling, and Stars Above, Stars Below, as well as a collaborative book with artist Sharon DeMark, and a chapbook titled The Call of Glacier Park. Her poetry has appeared in many publications and some unusual places, such as on sidewalks in the City of Saint Paul and in the metro transportation system.

Margaret has received poetry grants and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Loft-McKnight Foundation, Jerome Foundation, and Minnesota State Arts Board.

Reviews

[Luke Reynolds · Rating 3 out of 5]

Actual rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars

While Hasse's poems about nature and the quiet observations of life have some resonance in a collection centered on life in a pandemic, she also attempts to navigate the world's relationship with race in white guilt-centered poems that don't go beyond defensive reactions.