In Glad Wilderness Geraldine Cannon has woven an Appalachian tapestry of voices and images that are somehow at once clear as a swimming hole and as suggestive as an impressionist painting: "His skin develops Braille as he breathes me in." Her mode is not formal until the end of the series where she has written three triolets, of all things, that are three of the best triolets I have ever read. Completely unexpected, and perfectly delightful.
Lewis Turco, Poet/Scholar, author of The Book of Forms, 3rd ed. (University Press of New England, 2000)
Geraldine Cannon's many voices in this collection form a choir, each poem a soloist in turn, while the others hum and clap around it. In the virtuosic story-telling of her Southern personae, a world comes vibrantly into focus. In addition to her narrative gifts, Cannon gives us imagery that stuns with its originality and its rightness. Here is the marvelous close of the first poem in the book: "We are left / with so many wrinkles / if we could spread our skin out, / we could glide."
Susan Ludvigson, Poet, author of Escaping the House of Certainty: Poems (Louisiana State University Press, 2006)
Geraldine Cannon relies confidently on adroit observation and direct language unadorned by rarified reference or elaborate trope. She sees, she feels, she helps us home, to refresh ourselves with uncanny gladness in a wilderness of new experience. Time and again her poems lift us into the affecting and infectious realization of poetry's power to create "Unmeasured Time" and say to us, as her wise voice often does, "I am as full of wonder now as you."
Michael Heffernan, Poet, author of The Night Breeze off the Ocean: Poems (Eastern Washington University Press, 2005)
Lewis Turco, Poet/Scholar, author of The Book of Forms, 3rd ed. (University Press of New England, 2000)
Geraldine Cannon's many voices in this collection form a choir, each poem a soloist in turn, while the others hum and clap around it. In the virtuosic story-telling of her Southern personae, a world comes vibrantly into focus. In addition to her narrative gifts, Cannon gives us imagery that stuns with its originality and its rightness. Here is the marvelous close of the first poem in the book: "We are left / with so many wrinkles / if we could spread our skin out, / we could glide."
Susan Ludvigson, Poet, author of Escaping the House of Certainty: Poems (Louisiana State University Press, 2006)
Geraldine Cannon relies confidently on adroit observation and direct language unadorned by rarified reference or elaborate trope. She sees, she feels, she helps us home, to refresh ourselves with uncanny gladness in a wilderness of new experience. Time and again her poems lift us into the affecting and infectious realization of poetry's power to create "Unmeasured Time" and say to us, as her wise voice often does, "I am as full of wonder now as you."
Michael Heffernan, Poet, author of The Night Breeze off the Ocean: Poems (Eastern Washington University Press, 2005)
