Customer Reviews

The Beautiful Lesson of the I (Swenson Poetry Award)

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Frances Brent is a worthy recipient of the 2005 May Swenson Award. Her poems, small, craftful, and beautiful, like a delicate piece of origami, make it a pleasure to read and take in her poems. My favorite is The Melon: "There once was a man who had to see everything to remember: The melon grained and dented moon covered in netting..." It reminds of a beautiful, dreamy, mysterious scene of a movie. The poems are of small scenes like a beautiful pictaresque still life- Plate and Insect, Apple, Bottles, Butterfly, but when you look deep enough you see these poems are about something more than what meets the eye. Plate and Insect starts: "Hunger, a fume in the rice-colored nothingness surrounds the empty dish and an insect, the size of a watermelon seed, and then evaporates." Each poem is up to the reader to interpret, but one thing is sure, there is much more there than an insect and a plate. The best poetry book of 2005!

A highly recommend read, Frances Brent presents an intriguing collection of her greatest poems in The Beautiful Lesson Of The I. In this deftly written body of verse, the reader will find words of compelling guidance, thought evoking wisdom, and an intricate map of Frances Brets' encouraging mind. Undo: I drew a finger through the air with its memory objects--/there's nothing/but there is. I lean-ed the gray word/against the wall with the clock//and the dark compositions of Prohibition and Desire,/space between thought going off/and coming back--//Undo--/choppy feelings of the heart--/so much hope/as the bubble floats.