EchoLocations [Paperback]

Diane Thiel (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1, 2000

At home with traditional forms and free verse patterns, Diane Thiel composes highly charged, evocative poems that celebrate and elucidate voyaging-in our own hearts and minds, to other lands, back and forth in time-the natural world, science, and her family's German heritage.

Diane Thiel's poetry has appeared in The Best American Poetry 1999, The Hudson Review, Poetry, among others. She is the author of two chapbooks, Cleft in the Wall and The Minefield, both out from Aralia Press. She has an MFA from Brown University, and she teaches at the University of Miami.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Winner of the 13th Annual Nicholas Roerich Poetry Prize, this work is laced with memories of Thiel's German heritage, often alluding matter-of-factly to a shameful historic past. Her poems address the guilt of a nations and people who bear a violent history. "It will take many lifetimes/ to reclaim this language of my childhood," she says in "Traume" after listing the names of villages whose names are equated with concentration camps. Thiel disperses the silence of those who were the oppressors and takes responsibility for the wrongs into the present. Miraculously, the poems do not plunge into utter despair. In fact, it is re-hearing that brings redemption: "Our languages returning to the sounds / The calls reverberating through the waters/ to navigate the depths, to guide us through/ one ocean to another, the dark indigos,/ the song returning from the deepest blues." Recommended for general collections.DAnn K. van Buren, Riverdale Country Sch., New York
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

American tradition lives. And it throbs and pulses in..."Echolocations"... -- F. D. Reeve, Poetry Magazine, June 2001

Thiel loves the language she does have; she'll use it to make poetry out of a different time and place. -- Poetry Magazine, June 2001

[Diane Thiel's Echolocations] demonstrate[s] both considerable ability and promise of good things to come. -- R. S. Gwynn, The Hudson Review, Summer 2001 --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 96 pages
• Publisher: Story Line Press (November 1, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1885266979
• ISBN-13: 978-1885266972
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,054,174 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Truly strong work, February 28, 2001

By 

Laura Hanson (Tulsa, OK) - See all my reviews

This review is from: EchoLocations (Paperback)

I recently came across Diane Thiel's selection, featured by Poetry Daily... and was struck by the poem, "Kinder und Hausmarchen" (the original title of Grimm's fairy tales). I could relate to the blend of dark fairy tale and stories of war in the poem. I was led to her web page... and was impressed by the poems there too. This book is filled with truly strong work. Here is a poet with an ear for the nuances of language. (I liked the few lines of German in the book (4 total) - since they had a distinct purpose. And I appreciated the "Notes on the Poems" page in the back which defined them). Diane Thiel's work shows both skilled technique and passion. My strongest recommendation!

16 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful, powerful poetry, January 10, 2001

By 

Allison Brayton (Medford, MA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: EchoLocations (Paperback)

This book is beautiful inside and out (great cover). Diane Thiel is an extraordinarily lyrical poet, masterful of both form and free verse. The poems in "Echolocations" are on themes as diverse as the effect of war on people for generations after, the life of women, and science and the environment. Thiel's language is compressed--it is almost impossible to find a superfluous word--and powerful. The imagery is vivid and evocative. The title poem is representative: the poet encounters the skeleton of a whale on a deserted beach in Colombia. In entering the skeleton, she embarks on a journey from the personal to the universal. In extraordinarily resonant language, Thiel makes us FEEL the connection between all living things and lets us hear the whale's--nature's--song. This book of poetry is an invitation to a journey that is well-worth taking.

14 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars EchoLocations rings true!, January 30, 2001

By 

Corina Duenas (Chapel Hill, NC) - See all my reviews

This review is from: EchoLocations (Paperback)

Echolocations rings true! Some of the poems speak to my own experiences as a first-generation American. The poems can be read on many levels (the true sign of good art), as the reader journeys to new and familiar places and depths. The language is rich, textured, beautifully crafted, but never overly ornate (a problem with too much contemporary poetry). I especially love the way in which a simple word (like "heart") often acquires new potency when used in unexpected ways and contexts. For example, in the title poem, the poet walks inside the skeleton of a whale she encounters on the Colombian coast and reaches the place that "must have held her heart." She imagines she could have hidden inside the whale's vessels (to escape the violence of her childhood). As she touches the whale's bones, she is pulled into a mystical journey towards the hwaelweg (the whale-road, an Old English kenning for the sea):

...I felt the sun-warm bone against my skin - and a sudden heartbeat in the skeleton. Her heart beat with a distant beckoning, and in a moment I was with her, traveling The hwaelweg, the road itself another kenning...

In this book, one poem speaks to another. The theme of the first part, the effects of war on future generations, is echoed in the other three sections which contain poems offering observations on the lineage of women, love, and re-connection with the natural world. Diane Thiel uses form delicately but is not bound by it. The book is a fine blend of free verse and form, providing music in this exploration of important, timeless themes.