The Night Path (American Poets Continuum) [Hardcover]

Laurie Kutchins (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

This collection of poems, winner of the 1997 Isabella Gardner Poetry Award, will be a blessing to everyone who enjoys poetry and has parented a child or may do so someday. Kutchins writes with grace primarily about pregnancy, childbirth, and tending a newborn. Her poems explore the depths of early motherhood, but not all the poems are concerned with maternity. The poet walks with her mother in a seamy part of New York City, comes to terms with her father's cancer, witnesses a traffic fatality, swims in a swift river that is "white as ash and boiling." But the thread that links these poems is the creation of new life: "Little night tapper, my dreamer and my dream,/ my bones will soon turn to water/ for you." The poems are not arranged chronologically, which is initially disturbing (for example, poems about pregnancy follow poems about breastfeeding). But the book carries its own rhythm, and the "order" matters less and less as the reader moves through it. Kutchins is a poet who questions: "How long did I overlook November?" "What is it like to live without a future?" "Who is he, this stranger pulled from me?" Hers is not a closed world of certainty but an open world of great mystery. This is a poet who matters.?Judy Clarence, California State Univ. Lib., Hayward
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

Afternoon Along The Firehole River
The Amish Midwife
Birthdream
Birthdream (2)
Birthdream (3)
Birthdream (4)
Birthdream (5)
First Summer
Floating Poem: Manhattan Morning
Floating Poem: Manhattan Night When I Loved Mr. Hoberman
Floating Poem: Manhattan, Midday
From A Little Handbook On Dreams
Heartbeat
I Wanted To Paint The Night
Jenny Marie
Lullaby
Lupine
Milk
Moonflower
Morning In The Boiling River
Mountain Nocturne
My Father's Tumor
New Moon, End Of October
Nightfall
Nightfall
November
The Placenta
Portrait Of An Unfinished Self-portrait
Prayer
Prelude
The Sandhill Crane
September First
Summerless
Taurus
Think
Two Dreamers
Union
Venus
-- Table of Poems from Poem Finder®

Product Details

• Hardcover: 96 pages
• Publisher: BOA Editions Ltd.; 1st edition (September 1, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1880238489
• ISBN-13: 978-1880238486
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.2 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #6,440,234 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Strange, mystical, beautiful., August 1, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Night Path (American Poets Continuum) (Paperback)

Kutchins explores the unknown region of understanding between a woman and the tissue forming itself inside her womb. As cell's divide and grow more complex, so does the poet's relationship with what is soon to become her son. The poems of growth, and ultimately separation, begin to illuminate her relationship with her own parents, the earth as living organism, the universe. A beautiful and meditative book about the natural cycle of life and death inherent even in the ultimate creative act of birth.