The Bird Catcher
From AwardAnnals
| Book: | The Bird Catcher: Poems |
|---|---|
| Author: | Marie Ponsot |
| Honors: | |
| Genres: | |
| Publisher: | Alfred A. Knopf |
| Find it: |
|---|
Reviews
Amazon.com
Marie Ponsot is a subtle, delicate, and yet oddly assertive poet. Again and again in The Bird Catcher, she approaches experience with a kind of reasonable trepidation. Yet she always does what is necessary—as protagonist and poet—to elicit a spiritual insight. Braving the elements seems to be second nature to her. And in this volume, she’s consumed by one element in particular: water. In “Separate in the Swim,” for example, she can’t resist the ocean’s allure, despite her terror of “the aim of wave, the idea / that picks up the water / and throws it at the shore.” Yet this terror is also a prelude to a vision of oneness:
Each stroke starts a far drumming
clumping the kelp, helping
shells and rubbish decay into sand.
In this stretch of the Atlantic
the whole Atlantic operates.
As I ride, its broad cast evokes
my tiny unity, a pod, a person.
Thanks to the closure of skin
I’m forking the tune I’m part of
though my part is played moving
on a different instrument.
In every poem in the collection, Marie Ponsot functions as an explorer, relentlessly mapping one piece of terra incognita after another. A linguistic delight, The Bird Catcher is also an invitation to voyage into the inner and outer wilderness. —Mark Rudman



