Customer Reviews

Kettle Bottom

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

What Diane Gilliam Fisher has accomplished in her collection of poems, Kettle Bottom, is rare. Hard hard stories told in the softest of voices. In the same way a whisper commands our attention when a normal voice would not, Fisher's tales stop and tempt and hold us.
I don't believe poetry books are to be read in one sitting. It is hard for me to digest them all. I read. I absorb. I read. I absorb. But with Fisher's book, I find it hard to wait. I have to pick it up again, and listen to the next whisper.

Brilliant use of language and dialect. Respectful of the people she's telling stories about. She records accurate history through magnificent storytelling. I could not put it down and read it straight through, blood and heartbeat rising with each turn of the page. "Raven Light" absolutely haunts.

This book is beautifully written, with such poignancy and description that you can't help but be touched by the lives of the people of this coal-mining area and era. Certain passages bring tears to your eyes and instill strength in your soul.

I wept upon listening to the audio recording of these poems. The voices are luminescent reflections of my own family, who lived in Mingo County. As a poet, I am in awe.

This is an incredibly powerful book of poems. Slender as it is, it is difficult to read at one sitting. You read a poem like "Pink Hollyhocks" or "Milk" and you have to put it down, walk into another room to get your breathing back. Each portrait contained in these first person poems contains a world that is at the same time universal and specific. Centering on the mine wars era of 1920s West Virginia, it touches anyone who has any knowledge of the importance of community in hardscrabble violent times, and the intensity of private emotions for anyone trying to express the inexpressible.

Kettle Bottom is a wonderful book of vibrant and haunting poetry. Fisher captures both the time and the people with authenticity and sensitivity, allowing the reader to live in those moments through her characters. As poetry alone, the book shines brightly.

KETTLE BOTTOM offers various character studies set near the West Virginia mine wars (1920-21), offering an indication not only of the involving lives of the mining community but also the corporate misinterpretation of the passionate intensity of the mining families' commitment to community, family, and home. Characters refer to each other in the various poems, giving us an opportunity to learn indirectly an unofficial history of the community, and we see how even the best-intentioned outsiders (particularly the company-hired schoolteacher and a group of Ohio church ladies) fail to recognize the nobility and spiritual strength of the community. Diane Gilliam Fisher has presented a worthwhile collection of poems in this volume.

I am a college freshman and so thus my oppinion of this book will be told as such. I see the 'poems' writen in Kettle Bottom as stories, simply reworked to fit in a poem format. The stories hit you hard, but with a soft voice. I personaly give this book 3 out of 5 stars simply because I don't agree with this form of Poetry for the most part. The book is decently written but could be much, much better.