Books

Unmentionables
By Beth Ann Fennelly, Norton, 2008, 126 pp.

The epigraph at the beginning of Beth Ann Fennelly's new collection of poetry is from Lu Chi's Wen Fu, The Art of Writing: "What follows is only what can be said in words."

Much of our lives is difficult to put into words, to express, and therefore often remains "unmentionable." Except from Fennelly's wonderfully defiant pen.

Three years ago, her second volume of poems was embraced by a large audience. Tender Hooks was both tender and raw as it primarily examined new motherhood, a condition she considers "a surfeit of happiness, a glass-smooth pond/just begging for a stone."

Perhaps some of those stones are to be found in the pages of Unmentionables: an old boyfriend, a trusting husband, a growing daughter, a new son.

Unmentionables comprises four sections of thematically related poems alternating with three longer sequences. Some of the connected poems are wickedly playful. "First Warm Day in a College Town" is so magnificently subversive that the only way to respond to it is with a knowing grin:

here they are, the boys without shirts,
how fleet of foot, how cute their buns, I have made it
again, it is spring.

Other poems examine the conflict between the profession of motherhood and the profession of poet:

O you sneaky ...
something-o-phile ...
I rummage
but the word
is nowhere no
where in my diaper bag

The three longer sequences are as wondrous as the other sections. One is 15 dream songs in the fashion of John Berryman.

Another is an exquisite portrait, in 15 "Colorplates," of the life of French Impressionist Bertha Morisot, whose work was overshadowed by that of the better-known male painters of the period.

But the sequence that captures our attention is surely "The Kudzu Chronicles," in which Fennelly audaciously connects herself, the Illinois expatriate, to kudzu, the Japanese invader. Both plant and poet have taken to Mississippi; their kinship is authentic:

Then let the kudzu blanket me,
for I always loved the heat,
and let its hands rub out my name,
for I always loved affection.

Beth Ann Fennelly, quite simply, makes us want to read poetry again. Her genuine gift is in snatching poetry from its often rarefied heights and making it accessible and vibrant.

She takes us by the hand and moves us fearlessly through unexpected places — and we are grateful to have been invited on the journey.

Steven Whitton is a professor of English at Jacksonville State University.