Review by Choice Review
The past ten years have seen a proliferation of books about lesbian relationships. These books, beginning in our time with Adrienne Rich's love letters to another woman, letters full of tenderness, have become far less shocking. Merrin's handling is equally tender: readers hear a real person speaking. The first section explains the book's title: in wonderful three-line stanzas, with a subtle and surprising rhyme scheme, Merrin says, "As for me, / the scales tipped when she / touched me, just lightly." The middle section ("Blackmail"), which deals with Merrin's difficult relationship with her dead stepfather, lacks the tension of the first and last sections. Among the outstanding poems are those dealing with her lover when she falls sick: "North and Main," "Dream-view of Delft" ("which Delft now is real?"), "The Flood" (which pictures an entire life), and "Journal Entry" ("Our tragedies are insignificant / when you consider universal storms"). The last poem in the book, "Blue Skies," is terrific: "And so we will, a few months from now, visiting the Moravian / village of Ephraim, eating boiled potatoes and whitefish / at White Gull Inn by the blue glint of Death's Door." General and academic collections of contemporary poetry serving upper-division undergraduates and up. R. Whitman Radcliffe College
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review
Merrin's poems are elegant in their precision and perfect balance, passionate in their sensuousness and wild fervor. There is a muffled narrative in them, about a woman coming to herself through the love of a woman--a love that is neither "cure-/ all nor catastrophe; not, in lieu / of the usual, a compromise" --but that narrative never swamps the lyric voice. What Merrin seeks is the individual moment, seen with deliberateness and clarity, upon which a world can turn. She looks over rooftops at a "prodigious vocabulary" of trees, "redwood, linden, / sweetgum, sycamore, flowering / mimosa, eucalyptus, ginko, elm. / And this noticing of abundance / follows somehow from our love." Such fierce and tender love poems are especially beautiful parts of an impressive and moving whole. (Reviewed Sept. 15, 1996)0226520633Patricia Monaghan
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
"Over and over, I've broken my life,/ as a child breaks a toy/ to see how it works...," Merrin states in this fine first collection. Self-examination sparks many of the poems here, even when Merrin is writing of family members or her female lover. In "Big Sister," she sketches a portrait of her sister's stormy life and their strained relationship, asking: "What happened to us,/ what did I do, while/ I was saving myself?" Merrin remembers her deceased stepfather in "Blackmail," realizing "...I have not yet let him be/ through with failing to be what I want,/ my father...." The book's final poems focus on Merrin's lover who is undergoing chemotherapy for cancer. Their ordeal prompts Merrin to note: "When Chance grips big things, you control the small./ And here's that tired, self-reflexive trope/ the poet shaping print, a little god." In these quiet, introspective poems, Merrin generously shares what she has learned from her experience. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Choice Review
Review by Booklist Review
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
