Then, Something: Poems [Paperback]

Patricia Fargnoli (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 2009

"Patricia Fargnoli . . . does not miss a stitch of beauty, neither does she avoid the darker aspects of our own human awareness of our continual aging, to which she gives sharp and poignant attention. I have been her champion since her first book Necessary Light was published, and I continue to be so." --Mary Oliver

"I love the experience of reading a sister or brother poet and being struck by some beauty or truth, or both, and leaning forward and asking myself, How did she or he do that? This is the experience Then, Something gives me, poem after poem. The language and cadences seem natural, even casual. Yet something causes Patricia Fargnoli's lines to penetrate the psychic armor we all wear, and go straight to the place where the meanings are, as Emily Dickinson might put it. Fargnoli's ability to see and connect with the world around her, in its motions and stillness, its darkness and brightness, is uncanny. These haunting poems give comfort even when they probe the inevitabilities of suffering, aging, death. Perhaps it is because Fargnoli loves life, no matter what. Perhaps it is because the poems are simply beautiful." Alicia Ostriker

From "Wherever you are going":

you will want to take with you the mud-rich scent breaking through March frost,
and the aroma of lemons sliced on a blue plate, their pinwheels of light.

you will want to take strawberries you have stolen from the farmer's night fields,
and the sleepy child you lifted from under the willow where she'd been playing.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Blurring lines between reality and imagination, between what is and what is not, Fargnoli s poems challenge the reader to ponder, question, and settle into the quiet unrest of unknowns. . . . Fargnoli s world is complicated, beautiful, moving, and impenetrable. Her poems are the rain. We are the clouds." --Lori A. May, Poets' Quarterly

"In her third book of poetry, Patricia Fargnoli confronts the recesses of heavy sadnesses with a crystallized lyricism and a sensual voice, deciphering the alternate worlds between nature and human, body and spirit. . . . From seemingly ordinary acts like walking the dog, watching the garbage man, observing the blue rain, or listening to a mockingbird, Fargnoli draws from quiet yet organic moments metaphysical questions of being to better understand -- as well as accept -- the time and space she approaches. . . . As compared to Fargnoli's previous two volumes, this work experiments more daringly with disrupted poetic space and non-sequential narratives. . . . (L)ike all effective artists, her writing is simultaneously a catharsis and a means to assess and communicate the frightening as well as the inspiring." --Cerise Press

"Technically, in this collection Fargnoli reaches beyond what she has done before. For example, the entire second section is comprised of one long poem in 15 parts. Fargnoli also invents a new form in 'Lullaby for the Woman Who Walks into the Sea,' a stunning poem recently featured on Poetry Daily. . . . The repetitions capture the relentless, endless motion of the sea and create a chant-like, pounding music.

We also find a greater freedom and flexibility in line lengths, in the use of indentations, and in the shaping of poems. We find less reliance on the left margin, a greater willingness to spread out and use the full page. (In order to accommodate the poems with long lines, Tupelo used a wider format for the book.) These technical flourishes underscore the sense of motion." --Diane Lockward, Blogalicious

--Reviews

"Technically, in this collection Fargnoli reaches beyond what she has done before. For example, the entire second section is comprised of one long poem in 15 parts. Fargnoli also invents a new form in Lullaby for the Woman Who Walks into the Sea, a stunning poem recently featured on Poetry Daily. . . . The repetitions capture the relentless, endless motion of the sea and create a chant-like, pounding music.

We also find a greater freedom and flexibility in line lengths, in the use of indentations, and in the shaping of poems. We find less reliance on the left margin, a greater willingness to spread out and use the full page. (In order to accommodate the poems with long lines, Tupelo used a wider format for the book.) These technical flourishes underscore the sense of motion." --Diane Lockward, Blogalicious

"Blurring lines between reality and imagination, between what is and what is not, Fargnoli s poems challenge the reader to ponder, question, and settle into the quiet unrest of unknowns. . . . Fargnoli s world is complicated, beautiful, moving, and impenetrable. Her poems are the rain. We are the clouds." --Lori A. May, Poet's Quarterly

About the Author

Patricia Fargnoli was the New Hampshire Poet Laureate from 2006 to 2008 and is the author of five previous collections of poetry, including Duties of the Spirit (Tupelo Press, 2005), which won the 2005 Jane Kenyon Award for an outstanding book of poetry. Her first book, Necessary Light (Utah State University Press, 1999) was awarded the 1999 May Swenson Poetry Award, judged by Mary Oliver.

Fargnoli is a retired social work, and she has taught at the Frost Place and the New Hampshire Institute of Art as well as privately. She lives in Walpole, New Hampshire.

Product Details

• Paperback: 82 pages
• Publisher: Tupelo Press; First edition (September 1, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1932195793
• ISBN-13: 978-1932195798
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 7 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,205,322 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Rooted in New England, September 27, 2009

By 

Dr. Michael Hogan (Guadalajara, Mexico) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Then, Something: Poems (Paperback)

That these poems are strongly rooted in New England is suggested by the Frostian title and clearly illustrated by sharp images of the New Hampshire landscape. Less fond of moralizing than Frost and more skeptical, Patricia Fargnoli finds strength in endurance, faith in acceptance. Yet these poems have a sly, twinkling humor which segues smoothly into poignant leaps.
In once of my favorites, "Wherever you are going," she advises the reader to "leave your tickets and your Master Charge with its sad balance" as well as "the dust covering the books you meant to read" before you "release breath, leave behind the scars on your fingers...the long one over your heart."
In another, entitled "Grackles," the narrator is in the company of friends visiting the city, hungry, walking some distance as "restaurant after crowded restaurant turned us away." She manages to step away from her friends, the nightclubs with their "frenzied music and hoots of laughter" to the darkness of a grove of trees where the grackles have gathered in the darkening branches.
Some of these poems like the aforementioned are really about what it is to be alive in the world and how to keep that still quiet place inside despite the pressures and distractions of the diurnal, the expectations of others, and the inexorable pressures of time.
There is intelligence and energy in these poems as well as a sense of a life lived paying attention--not only to the local landscape but to what really matters, according to another New Englander who "wanted to live deep and suck all the marrow of life," the search for meaning. But for Fargnoli,the search includes the willingness to accept that it is may be as fleeting as the light at the bottom of a well.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars That magical thing about some books...., September 24, 2009

By 

Kaite Ewing (Western New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Then, Something: Poems (Paperback)

Because I have read and treasured Patricia Fargnoli's other books, I knew I would be abandoning every other bit of reading when her latest volume, "Then, Something", arrived at my door. I am not disappointed. The one thing that strikes me, so truthfully, when I read this luminous collection of poems (besides the richness of imagery and language, the maturity and masterly use of her craft) is the honesty. It is so inspiring, and also very, very comforting, somehow. Fargnoli's subject matter is sometimes very solemn, but the magic lies in the beauty that she pulls from it, how it softly, yet directly, enters the heart with comfort and illumination of the very fine balance between joy and sorrow, love and fear. It never ceases to amaze me how such a slender book of poems can hold so much weight. It's nothing short of magic to me. Some books are just alive. When I hold them, turn their bright pages, it's like opening one door after another to the mysteries of living and dying in this beautiful and sometimes very dark world we live in. So much to discover in such a small, weightless bundle of paper and ink. Not all books, just some. This is one of them.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wise and wondrous..., September 23, 2009

By 

L. (Laredo, TX, United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Then, Something: Poems (Paperback)

As I began to read 'Then, Something' I was reminded of William Carlos Williams' line: "It is difficult/to get the news from poems/yet men die miserably every day/for lack/of what is found there." With her opening poem, "Wherever you are going", I knew that Patricia Fargnoli fully grasps what poetry has to do with life-and-death and that she valiantly sides with life, through all its vicissitudes. As I was carrying this, her latest book, around with me, the national news was informing me of a declining happiness quotient in contemporary women, and I was glad -- happy, actually -- to let her wise and wondrous poetry provide the 'deep background' for such 'news'. For actual current events, in "Pemaquid Variations" she humbly, movingly, with gentle and consummate skill, addresses those of September, 2001.

But the most crucial reason for buying, treasuring and gifting Fargnoli's book is her flair and fortitude when presenting the ordinary miracles, in concrete images that mark the most useful path to shared consciousness. From gorgeously cataloguing nature in "The Gifts of Linnaeus" to wryly singing "Pain's Song"; from lyrically sketching a "Landscape in Black and White" to grittily filming a modern-day "Dante's Inferno", Fargnoli invited me to identify -- but really identify -- with her words.

For a long time, I confess to having kept my own secretly fierce but finite canon of U.S. poets -- Bishop and Rich, Roethke and Stevens, not too many more -- but 'Then, Something' happened to reawaken my interest in all the never-before-seen aspects of poetry I'd sort of forgotten about -- and I immediately got to add a new writer to my list. Ironic, that someone who actually taught me several important things about aging (in "Easter Morning", for example), has also revived in me some long-lost youthful responses to poetry. I am so pleased that the daily Writer's Almanac emails first introduced me to Patricia Fargnoli's work several years (you can also look in Verse Daily's recent archives for a poem from this work), and that she is generous about appearing online and in person, making it easier to relay the news of her finely-crafted and spiritually astute poetry.