Poems of loss, grief and resolution following the drunk driving death of a young friend.
Book Description
Editorial Reviews
Review
"This is spoken poetry of a lovely musicality, in a movement appropriate to the subject. The details are clear, moving, authentic, the syntax natural, unforced, elegant." --Jim Applewhite, Professor, American Literature, Duke University
"Night Huntress--I've never seen anything quite like it before. It stand beautifully apart and alone. A very handsome book too." --Eileen Malone, President, PEN/Nob Hill
There is prose poetry, and then there is poetry that looks like prose. Joanna Catherine Scott's book Night Huntress is one of the best examples of true poetry in the guise of prose poetry that I've ever encountered." --Wild Goose Review
"A poignant, finely crafted read. Ideal for those who enjoy contemporary poetry and flash fiction alike." --The Pedestal Magazine
"The story is told simply, in language so controlled and elegant that what was in fact an ugly tragedy becomes transformed into a thing of melancholic beauty." --Tony Abbott, The Search for Wonder in the Cradle of the World
"Night Huntress--I've never seen anything quite like it before. It stand beautifully apart and alone. A very handsome book too." --Eileen Malone, President, PEN/Nob Hill
There is prose poetry, and then there is poetry that looks like prose. Joanna Catherine Scott's book Night Huntress is one of the best examples of true poetry in the guise of prose poetry that I've ever encountered." --Wild Goose Review
"A poignant, finely crafted read. Ideal for those who enjoy contemporary poetry and flash fiction alike." --The Pedestal Magazine
"The story is told simply, in language so controlled and elegant that what was in fact an ugly tragedy becomes transformed into a thing of melancholic beauty." --Tony Abbott, The Search for Wonder in the Cradle of the World
From the Author
A Sample Poem:
IN THE DAWN VALLEY
Winner of the 2008 Jandall Jarrell Poetry Award
I have come early to this valley where the girl died and the boy was smashed into the earth. The air is cool, the grass wet underfoot. Joe Pye weed, mauve and melancholy, grows tall as a man with a child held on his shoulders, and white flowers on fragile-looking stems rise up all over. Their heads are delicate and intricate, like tatted lace, or stars, or photographs of snowflakes blown up large. They are completely still, as if they have been dried and set in place, stretching out across the valley, almost orderly, almost haunting, almost (I do not want to think of this again) like the small white crosses up and down the road.
Except that these are not crosses, but flowers. They are their own memorial. And they are alive, I can see that now, because a light breeze has risen and is traveling through the valley, and their heads, one after the other, bow before it. It is a scene both beautiful and tender, with the silver sky of morning in the valley's cleft and the gray mist overhead. The birds' voices are like bells, the insects' voices like the struck metal of a thousand triangles, each note vibrating clear. Somewhere a cow lows, deep and mellow as an organ played in church.
There is nothing else for me to say, nothing to be done, except, perhaps, to discover the name of these white flowers, or to name them. Yes, I will name them. I will give them a private name, one that only I will know.
I will call them Flowers of Benediction.
Winner of the 2008 Jandall Jarrell Poetry Award
I have come early to this valley where the girl died and the boy was smashed into the earth. The air is cool, the grass wet underfoot. Joe Pye weed, mauve and melancholy, grows tall as a man with a child held on his shoulders, and white flowers on fragile-looking stems rise up all over. Their heads are delicate and intricate, like tatted lace, or stars, or photographs of snowflakes blown up large. They are completely still, as if they have been dried and set in place, stretching out across the valley, almost orderly, almost haunting, almost (I do not want to think of this again) like the small white crosses up and down the road.
Except that these are not crosses, but flowers. They are their own memorial. And they are alive, I can see that now, because a light breeze has risen and is traveling through the valley, and their heads, one after the other, bow before it. It is a scene both beautiful and tender, with the silver sky of morning in the valley's cleft and the gray mist overhead. The birds' voices are like bells, the insects' voices like the struck metal of a thousand triangles, each note vibrating clear. Somewhere a cow lows, deep and mellow as an organ played in church.
There is nothing else for me to say, nothing to be done, except, perhaps, to discover the name of these white flowers, or to name them. Yes, I will name them. I will give them a private name, one that only I will know.
I will call them Flowers of Benediction.
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More About the Author
Joanna Catherine Scott (1943--) was born in England during an air raid over London, raised in Australia by a rabidly religious mother and a phlegmatic engineer father, married way too young, divorced, fell in love again and came with her American husband to live in the US where, aside from a couple of years in the Philippines, she has lived below the Mason Dixon line ever since. Her five novels and oral history collection have all been based on true life stories, giving voice to the voiceless. Her poetry tells stories too. She has six children, three Australian and three adopted Korean, as well as a young man whom she met while he was on death row whom she regards as her seventh child. A Woodrow Wilson Visiting Fellow, she is a graduate of Adelaide and Duke Universities and lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Her website is www.joannacatherinescott.com.
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Comments on Night Huntress,
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This review is from: Night Huntress (Paperback)
I have always greatly appreciated Joanna Catherine Scott's work. She balances a keen emotive intensity with an unsentimental overview. In this collection of related poems, she impacts us with vivid reminders of the precariousness and preciousness of life--leading us into a meditation on the beauty of relatedness, empathy for the suffering world--never collapsing into mawkishness. A compelling volume. --John Amen
5.0 out of 5 stars
Night Huntress, a powerful collection of related poems,
This review is from: Night Huntress (Paperback)
Night Huntress by Joanna Catherine Scott is a powerful collection of poems.
As Tony Abbott so aptly said, "I wept over this book. Every one of us has known a young man or woman who has gone out and got drunk and killed themselves. In telling the story of one, Night Huntress speaks for all. And yet there is no preaching or hyperbole. The story is told simply, in language so controlled and elegant that a brutal misadventure becomes transformed into a thing of melancholic beauty. A shocking, but at the same time, a comforting and healing book." I was riveted by the voice and read the entire book in a single night.
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