In the long tradition of biography-in-poetry collections, Annie Boutelle’s first collection probes the layered life of one of nineteenth-century America’s most popular poets, who is now almost forgotten. The Celia Thaxter who speaks these poems disturbs the placid myth created around her public persona, and focuses on the fierce mysteries and ironies that frame her. Boutelle carefully reveals Thaxter’s childhood on the stark Isles of Shoals off the New Hampshire coast; the trap of a Victorian marriage; the struggle to invent herself as writer and painter; her celebrated circle of friends, including Nathaniel Hawthorne and Childe Hassam; and the hard-won serenity of her last decade. Clear, airy, crystalline, these poems move us into an elemental world where “nothing is left but water, / air, and the uncertain space between.” With restraint and lyric tenderness, Boutelle leads us toward a woman who shifts from pose to necessary pose, who survives in these pages with intelligence and grace: “The grave / flesh melts. What’s left / is light as bone.”
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Editorial Reviews
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“In a language spare, exact, essential as necessity itself, ‘past flattering chatter, hypocrisies lush as weed on harbor rock,’ Annie Boutelle tears aside the flowery veils of feminine concealment of another age, to give voice to the inner life of an islanded soul.”
—Eleanor Wilner, author of The Girl with Bees in Her Hair and Reversing the Spell: New and Selected Poems
“This is a magnificent secret history—of a time we now know very little, in spite of its closeness, and of a remarkable spirit who lived in that time and is now forgotten. The poems are stark, original, lovely, the poetic knowledge terrific. Read this fine book.”
—Gerald Stern, author of Everything is Burning and American Sonnets
“The sorrows and victories of Thaxter’s life are conveyed with
sensual, sonorous richness and yet understatement. If much of her inner life—like that of so many women (some of them writers)—went unwritten for a time, Becoming Bone has redressed the blankness with empathy, depth, and a keen intelligence.”
—Mary Jo Salter, author of Open Shutters: Poems and A Kiss in Space: Poems
—Eleanor Wilner, author of The Girl with Bees in Her Hair and Reversing the Spell: New and Selected Poems
“This is a magnificent secret history—of a time we now know very little, in spite of its closeness, and of a remarkable spirit who lived in that time and is now forgotten. The poems are stark, original, lovely, the poetic knowledge terrific. Read this fine book.”
—Gerald Stern, author of Everything is Burning and American Sonnets
“The sorrows and victories of Thaxter’s life are conveyed with
sensual, sonorous richness and yet understatement. If much of her inner life—like that of so many women (some of them writers)—went unwritten for a time, Becoming Bone has redressed the blankness with empathy, depth, and a keen intelligence.”
—Mary Jo Salter, author of Open Shutters: Poems and A Kiss in Space: Poems
From the Publisher
Published in the University of Arkansas Press Poetry Series, edited by Enid Shomer.
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5.0 out of 5 stars
A biography-in-poetry anthology that probes and reveals the life of one of 19th Century America's most popular poets,
By Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Becoming Bone: Poems On the Life of Celia Thaxter (1835-1894) (Paperback)
Annie Boutelle is a senior lecturer at Smith College and the founder of the Smith College Poetry Center. Becoming Bone: Poems On The Life Of Celia Thaxter (1836-1894) is a biography-in-poetry anthology that probes and reveals the life of one of 19th Century America's most popular poets, but who is now an almost forgotten name in American letters. An accomplished and award-winning poet, Annie Boutelle does her unusual subject full and complete literary justice framed as only a seasoned and gifted wordsmith can. Her verse is as hauntingly memorable as it is deftly structured. Land-Locked (Newtonville, 1861): Turning her back on brawling/boys, unemptied chamber pots,/the bolted bedroom door, she/dips her pen in gullible ink://Have patience; here are flowers and songs of birds,/Beauty and fragrance, wealth of sound and sight,/All summer's glory thine from morn till night,/And life too full of joy for uttered words.//She learns to lie, calls it her "little poem."/They pay ten dollars, and she recalls/how last summer Mrs. Bliven said no one/is paid for making a string of shells.
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Professor Boutelle is absolutely fabulous,
This review is from: Becoming Bone: Poems On the Life of Celia Thaxter (1835-1894) (Paperback)
If you appreciate poetry, you should read her book.
Professor Boutelle if you're reading this: absolutely exquisite.
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Inside This Book
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First Sentence:
The schooner slips from Portsmouth and the river widens, a snake that opens sluggish jaws to swallow the sea, and everything slides past-bricks, the pared spire of the church, wharves, chimneys, terraced plots of green, that thin woman who bends to her basket and pegs scraps of clothing on a line, that clump of elms, a hearse meandering on its way, the boy with the brown cap fishing from a pier, the silver body of his catch twitching an arc that swings from him as everything moves past without word or protest and the ship glides unperturbed into a world where nothing is left but water, air, and the uncertain space between. Read the first page Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Appledore Island, White Island New!
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Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
The schooner slips from Portsmouth and the river widens, a snake that opens sluggish jaws to swallow the sea, and everything slides past-bricks, the pared spire of the church, wharves, chimneys, terraced plots of green, that thin woman who bends to her basket and pegs scraps of clothing on a line, that clump of elms, a hearse meandering on its way, the boy with the brown cap fishing from a pier, the silver body of his catch twitching an arc that swings from him as everything moves past without word or protest and the ship glides unperturbed into a world where nothing is left but water, air, and the uncertain space between. Read the first page Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Appledore Island, White Island New!
Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Citations (learn more)
This book cites 7
books:
See all 7 books this book cites
- Isles of Shoals (Island Light) by Annie Boutelle on 4 pages
- Among the Isles of Shoals (Revisiting New England) by Celia L. Thaxter in Back Matter (1), Back Matter (2), and Back Matter (3)
- Nathaniel Hawthorne (in Beacon Biographies) (Notable American Authors) by Annie Fields in Back Matter
- CENTENARY ED WORKS NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE: VOL. VIII, THE AMERICAN NOTEBOOKS (The Centenary Edition of the Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne ; V. 8) by NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE in Back Matter
- An Island Garden by Celia Thaxter in Back Matter
See all 7 books this book cites
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