Customer Reviews

Unmentionables: Poems

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Fennelly is like a bright sparrow, ever-moving, garbed at times in colorful feathers of another species, at others content to perch and watch as life marches by.

Bemused by the easy memories of youth in America, the poet considers how drastically the world has changed, how our naiveté marks us targets, our adamant innocence begging to be taught real-world lessons, too long the cherished only child in a country where lack and pain grows more visible:

"Because of our bemused affection for our youthful cruelties.

It's still so hard
to accept that people who have never seen me would like to see me
dead. And you as well. Our fat babies. Our spoiled dogs.

And I, a girl at thirty-two, who likes to think she was a rebel...

what would they think of me, the terrorists
and terrified? Wouldn't they agree I've got it coming?"
(Cow Tipping)

A section is devoted to "Berthe Morisot: Retrospective", the poet slipping into the mind of a paint-stained artist saturated with light and shadow, insight and the infallible moment of creativity, of purpose:

"Degas, Renoir, Manet with his two-pronged beard-
go to the Café Guerbois.
Let them drink calvados

On their way home, let them look up from the cobbles
to where I've hung the yellow canvas
of my studio window
see
while you boys leapfrog in the alley
my light is burning"
(Berthe Morisot: Retrospective, Colorplate 13)

The years of such joy now past, the artist reminisces:

"Am I not yet that girl
who pried, in secret, the diamond
from Mama's hat pin?
No one guessed no one ever guessed
I swallowed brilliance,
nature's hardest substance scoring me."
(Berthe Morisot: Retrospective, Colorplate 70)

True to her heart and her inspiration, Fennelly returns to her source:

"Poems
you burn in the sink. Poems
that had to go and use
your name, never mind
that soon you'll be 16, hate
your name."
(People Ask What My Daughter Will Think of My Poems When She's 16

Tethered to the world by what she values, Fennelly soars through time, past and present, the many rooms of an imagination fueled by simple observations, profound realizations, an attempt to bridge two worlds, fanciful and real, to travel between them and with impunity, a seemingly easy feat for such a writer:

"I pumped my swing at six
so hard my sneakers toed the sky. You
know, don't you,
what happened next- after the swing set's stiff legs
rocked thrice- but before I hit the ground-
I flew."
(Say You Waved: A Dream Song Cycle)

In four sections, the poet unleashes the images of the imaginative journey blazing through the pages of this collection: "The Kudzu Chronicles"; Berthe Morisot: Retrospective"; and the series of Dream Songs. Her world expanded by an open heart and open mind, this poet never, never disappoints, always leaves me filled with the pure joy of language that expounds the boundaries of my experience. Luan Gaines/ 2008.

The word "unmentionable" does not, strictly speaking, mean something that is inappropriate; it can also mean something that words can't describe well. "Unmentionables" is a poetry collection by experienced and prolific author Beth Ann Fennelly, who tries to speak of what can't be spoken with inspired and detailed lyrical verse. The result is an enlightening and entertaining reading experience. Community library poetry collections would do well in acquiring "Unmentionables". "Colorplate 68": Eugene worsens./ At fifty I am old./ I paint en plein air no more.// April: he gives me a bunch of violets./ I crush them/ onto my pallette,/ suture my canvas/ with violets.

B.A.F.'s insistence on her "bad girl" girldom is unconvincing. Her lineation is slack; her jokes flat. Why does this poet receive rock-star blurbs for her airy, uninteresting poetics of (not much to confess) confession?

Beth Ann Fennelly delves into what we consider unmentionable. At times coarse, my favorite poems in this book were verses about a French Impressionist painter, which harkened back to a more elegant age. The language in this section was more than tolerable and hints at the true artistry of the poet. It is a shame that the rest of the poetry collection was not written in a similar manner. Replete with off color language and sexual innuendo. Definitely not for the younger set.