From Publishers Weekly
Narrated by a fictive 18th century naturalist, Loranzo Newcomb, this ambitious book-length poem meditates on both natural and human phenomena, flawlessly evoking the variegated personality of its speaker. Composed of 14 sections, each a letter, the poem develops from a description of a snakebite and its aftereffects to accounts of distinctively American animals and personal recollections. Galvin ( Seals in the Inner Harbor ) portrays these scenes in crisp, forthright terms, permitting Newcomb to ponder their significance: the narrator detects in the skunk's foul but sometimes curative spray the hand of God; in a letter purporting to depict fiddler crabs, he relates their half-hatched look to human striving and thus to unrequited love; and, in the final "Envoy," addressed directly to the reader, a discussion of apples delicately questions the historical fiction of the poem and the concept of history itself. However, the sections, while individually comely, do not cohere; they do not build on one another and their order seems arbitrary.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Review
Apprenticed To The Bird Master
Envoy
I Do Not Believe, As Some Here
Letter Accompanying A Cask Of Seeds From America (1723)
Letter Accompanying The Specimen Of An Amazing Bird
Loranzo Newcomb's Fiddler Crab Letter To Mistress Mary Colby
A Man Of Skill In These Colonies
A New Sect
A New-world Dream
Now I Will Tell You Our Manner
Snakebit
Some Entertainment Sent With A Gift Snuffbox Carved
There Is One In This Country
Why There Is Spring Lightning: Letter To B. Franklin
-- Table of Poems from Poem Finder®
Envoy
I Do Not Believe, As Some Here
Letter Accompanying A Cask Of Seeds From America (1723)
Letter Accompanying The Specimen Of An Amazing Bird
Loranzo Newcomb's Fiddler Crab Letter To Mistress Mary Colby
A Man Of Skill In These Colonies
A New Sect
A New-world Dream
Now I Will Tell You Our Manner
Snakebit
Some Entertainment Sent With A Gift Snuffbox Carved
There Is One In This Country
Why There Is Spring Lightning: Letter To B. Franklin
-- Table of Poems from Poem Finder®
