Review: The Wanderer shows a poet in prime and vital voice worth reading and rereading.

The Wanderer by Christine Gosnay
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Christine Gosnay's chapbook "The Wanderer" contains some of the finest poetry I have read from a poet of the new century so far. Gosnay is not afraid to use imagery from nature, but she does it in a fresh way.

Yellow heat strafes
the hand-deep water
where the shade-eyed darner makes its notch.

At the same time, she also revivifies the commonplace of living.

It means that when I pull nothing out from the soft center
where my stomach, pale and useful, longs,

pulling as if at a doll's string to say ache
in a bright, unrecognizable voice,

I move my ind by the hand from the dark blue room
where it is thinking-feeling

toward the edge of the blank graph...

Her poems are collages of experiences, images, and thoughts that still maintain an overall unity of feeling and thinking. Unlike many collections, "The Wanderer" does not falter or contain poems that show obvious need for more rewriting. There is a consistency of tone and craft throughout.

Gosnay's work here shows a poet in prime and vital voice worth reading and rereading.

View all my reviews