"Unpretentious poetry as personal
and familial memoir. The first section
of the latest poetry collection by Parnell (author of Snake Woman and
Other Explorations: Finding the Female in Divinity, 2001) memorializes
her family and early-20th-century living. With loving but unsentimental
reverence, she records the lives and deaths of parents and relatives.
Recollections such as a great-aunt’s fondness for contacting spirits
(“Cora”), and neighborhood kids feasting on her father’s garden (“We
Called Him Daddy”), celebrate the gentler pace of life that Americans
once enjoyed. The essay “Charles” documents matters seldom discussed in
the ’30s (breasts, bras, even sex) and “James Frances Parnell” explores
the perils of blue-collar working conditions. The second section holds
love dedications, addressed to various family and friends: children,
partner, sibling, et al. In “For Liam and Sadie Claire,” Parnell’s
homespun style drives the tribute she pays to a set of premature twins
who did not survive, and “PAEAN: A Song of Celebration: Remembering the
Growing-Up Years” navigates equally well within the household subject
matter. The latter forms the crux of the book, a simple but important
message: much of life’s joy lies in the routines of everyday living.
But just as in life, this slim volume does contain stumbling blocks.
Her own constipation (yes, constipation) awkwardly inspires a summary
of Elvis’ final moments in “August 16, 1977,” and the analogy in “The
Poet and the Chocolate Rabbit”—poetry writing is like eating said
confection—would have functioned better as a poem. Parnell shows more
flair, however, with “Union Station, Washington, D.C.,” an amusing poem
in which she encounters a flasher, and “Ariel at 60,” a plaintive
mermaid’s lament, each displaying carefully structured phrases and
precise language. A pleasant, charming read that would serve well as a
poetry primer for older adults seeking material that isn’t intimidating
or indecipherable."
Parnell, Pat TALKING WITH BIRCHES: Poems of Family and Everyday Life
The Journal Press, Inc. (96 pp.) $15.00 paperback September 2004 ISBN:
0-974611-0-7 —Kirkus Discoveries
"Pat Parnell's poetry is a gift for each reader. In
celebrating the ordinary, she makes us see our own ordinary lives, past and
present, discovering how extraordinary they are." Donald
M. Murray, a Pulitzer Prize winner, writes the Boston Globe column
"Now and Then."
"Pat Parnell has turned godhead upside down and
re-birthed it from Primal Earth Mother in the neatest trick of scholarly
midwifery I've ever personally witnessed. There are hilarities here and banquets
of food for thought" Jean Pedrick, poet and essayist. Author, Catgut,
greenfellow and Pride of Splendor,
Parnell's
Subjects Resonate with Reader
I picked up "Talking With Birches" by Pat Parnell
and read it right through, because with each poem I understood, and cared about,
what she was saying. Her subjects resonated: family, identity, loss,
letting go, holding on, taking care of one another by such simple acts as
bringing in wood for the stove, mushrooms (or are they toadstools?) sprouting in the bathroom,
falling leaves.
Parnell
of Stratham, long rooted in New Hampshire, grew up in Virginia among writers and
characters. She writes often of nature, of culture (the paintings of Georgia
O'Keeffe and Picasso, the Chieftains playing at Portsmouth Music Hall), but
family stories are central. "Think of the poems," she writes,
"not as complete family history but as mini-memoirs, bits of family gossip,
'memory and heart-scrap,' in poet Wesley McNair's phrase."
Great-aunt Min called herself "the best boy" her father ever had. She
ran a canning factory and believed in love. Parnell knows this because Min said
so, "when we visited, leaning forward in her rocker to stab her cane at us.
'Loving everybody. Not the kind of love you go to bed with.' "Great-aunt
Cora was a table tipper, summoning Victorian spirits. Grandfather Edward taught
young Patsy to scatter black-eyed Susan seeds "among the coarse beach
grasses," so, come spring, they would reflect "sunlight in their
golden petals, lifting their dark centers toward the sky." From her
father, she learned the origin of the
expression "blue streak."
The prose poem (or is it an essay?) "Visitation," explores connections across generations:
"I wear my mother's skin, snug across my shoulders." To the pool.
To the mall: "Everywhere, people crowding the bright promenade wear at
least one skin besides their own. Some have two or three heads bobbing along
beside their heads, eyes rolling sideways or straight up to the sky.
People don't have to be dead to have someone else wear their skins."
Rebecca Rule, Published: Sunday, Oct. 17, 2004 Concord Monitor,
"Talking of Birches: Poems of Family and Everyday Life" by Pat Parnell
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