THE POETRY OF PAT PARNELL

Reviews

"Unpretentious poetry as personal and familial memoir. The first section of the latest poetry collection by Parnell (author of Snake Woman andOther 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