Customer Reviews

Kore in Bloom

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Holley's finest work, uplifting and technically stunning. A great, great book of poetry for anyone who appreciates the craft.

This is an extraordinary collection, filled with poems that evoke a world of mythological meaning just beneath the surface of contemporary life. The poem "Instructions for Healing" (which introduces the "Kore in Bloom" sequence in the middle of the book), begins by briefly recounting a Mediterranean voyage and goes on to take a profound journey indeed, in which the reader can "listen to the veins of the world turning to ice and silence." Creation of myth and ceremony is not a thing of the past when a poet of Margaret Holley's depth can get in touch with the flesh and bone of the universe, "the sleepy intelligence of the electron cloud," "sentience clinging to stone," (from "The Stars"), "the memory of every molecule in the motel of body and mind," (from "Now the Cicadas"), the fact that "the rock you see is a dance of atoms" (from "The Book of Changes").
The language is exquisite throughout; the range of experience in the background is substantial, and doors open in every poem to worlds the reader might well never otherwise encounter, from the numeromania of Anton Bruckner to the myths of the riveting Kore (pun intended) section, to the final moments of Brahms, the moon, Rilke. KORE IN BLOOM is unlike any other book of poetry I have ever read. I enthusiastically recommend it to anyone who wants to experience language in ways that are strikingly original and beautiful.