She be.

by Tina Pisco

Pisco, Tina. She be. First Edition. Cork, Bradshaw Books, 2010. 14 x 21 cm. 51 pages. Original Softcover. Excellent condition with only minor signs of external wear. With a signed dedication by the author on the halt title and an additional full signature on the title page to fellow poet Adam Wyeth. Includes for Woman; Thinker; Lover; Writer etc.

Paperback

First published January 1, 2012

About the author

Tina Pisco has worked as a professional writer for over twenty-five years, writing for every medium except radio (including internet drama and comics). She lives in beautiful West Cork, Ireland and has published novels, non-fiction and poetry.

She has lived in West Cork, Ireland for over twenty years, where many of her books are set.

Reviews

[Mary McCray · Rating 3 out of 5]

Tina Pisco is another poet in command of her rhythms, sentence structures and building dramatic movement within her poems. I was intrigued by her book's section titles: Woman, Lover, Thinker, Writer, all which create a kind of mathematical equation out of "She be woman, she be lover, she be thinker..." I also liked coming across Irishisms in her poems like Y-front (instead of V-neck) and smallies (for kiddies). Pisco has a sure sense of purpose about each poem as well. She always gets somewhere.

"Photograph" starts the book out strong and is one of the best poems in the set. I loved the experimental "DOGFOODCATFOOD" and the grrl power in "Contradictory Expectations." I also enjoyed the musical momentum of "Artists' Exemption."

What I would like to see more in her next book of poems is more specificity of word choice (show v. tell). I was missing the juicy exacting word in many places. In revisions, she could improve upon the generalities of phrases like "take me in your arms," "bed of roses," "lived and loved hard," "with the best of them." These types of cliches also hampered my reading of her characters in these poems. Her lover comes across as simply the generic lover. I had no sense of who he was with any specificity (body or heart).

For instance, there are meaty phrases in this poem "From St. Andrews to the St. Alixe"

The watchfulness/of shoes....
...through towns where Weather is a citizen...
...store my words in salt.

Here the specificity is really percolating. The final poem, "For Sharon" is another great example of beautiful particularity.

It's in the silence
between the crow's caw
and the wind's rush

It's in the stillness
between the last heartbeat
and the next breath

that the poet
find the

poem.