Customer Reviews

The Scented Fox (National Poetry Series)

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

 

 

Contemporary Poetry Series competition winner Laynie Browne presents The Scented Fox, a compilation ranging from stream-of-consciousness prose to free-verse poetry to sparse "interludes" that express much with little. Mysterious in its evocations of repetitive patterns, stable within a poem yet shifting from work to work, The Scented Fox explores both within and without the self, evoking a timeless mood through rhythmic imagery. "Lullaby": O the windward - it is a sooth / that harbors through the wintering // O the saith it is a dormer / that bids the sooth to enter // and let us sake the seer my fro / and let us sister together // the singer lasts the secant long / somnambulism lasts formally // and let us saint the seam my frieze / and let us sip together // the singer lasts the secret long / but this somewhere lasts foretellingly

This is a very strange book, but the more I read it, the more I like it. It is mainly prose poetry, some of which tells stories and some of which is pretty impenetrable. There are recurring themes, particularly something called a "traveling crystal" that appears intermittently throughout the book. The last part of the book is a "Festoon Dictionary" in which words are given new definitions that seem to be based on what the author thinks the words sound like. It is a fun book for those who enjoy wordplay. Many of the themes are vaguely feminine and some of the poems seem like fables that have veered way off the narrative path. It is a good book to read before going to sleep as it is sort of hypnotic in a confusing, Ericksonian way.