Beholdings, Poems - Softcover

Adcock, Betty

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0807114669 ISBN 13: 9780807114667

Publisher: Louisiana State Univ Pr, 1988

About this title

From Publishers Weekly:

Precise, vivid images and a commanding tone empower these poems with urgency. In "Clearing Out, 1974," the author sorts through her father's desk after his death in a hunting accident: "Forget the checkbook that was awash with blood,/ and the wallet, its pictures crusted dark./ Everything in his pockets was afloat./ A man shot in the stomach drowns/ what's on him. Let the personal effects/ stay in their labeled plastic sack. Go on/ as if this were a forest with a path." In several poems, Adcock (Nettles, etc.) explores her eastern Texas roots. Both beholden to her past and a keen beholder of it, she tells stories like the ones she heard as a child, in which ordinary local people become legendary: "Hosey Lucas was always there at Oscar's./ He looked like a man made out of parched cornhusks./People said that. People waited in the lull/ when no car was passing. They knew he'd tell/ again how he happened to have that sunk-in place/ right in the middle of his forehead/ kicked by a mule when he was twelve/ and the whole thing just healed over/ without a doctor." It is when Adcock is specific like this that her cerebral poetry is most accessible. In "Remembering Brushing My Grandmother's Hair," the texture and clarity of the language renders the scene she's describing immediately visible: "I see her in a ring of sewing, light/ fingers on needle and hoop, elaborate/ scissors shaped like a tiny stork,/ the glass egg in her lap./ Her temperate mourning wore black shoes./ Released, her hair released a scent . . . ."
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal:

Impeccable selectivity of details, a masterly use of metaphor, and an ear for inner music make Adcock a true poet. Part 1 offers the evolution (or devolution) of East Texas in rich categories of minerals, plants, animals, places, and lost tribes; part 2, musings whose topics range from Plath to the nuclear age to memories of brushing her grandmother's hair (an exquisite poem); and part 3, a deeply moving recollection of a voyage to the Cyclades. Throughout, memories unspool themselves like the journey described in "Big Thicket Settler, 1840s." Here is an artist of sensibility, vision, clarity of thought, and reverence who feels a responsibility for the Word. Daisy Aldan, New York City
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Louisiana State Univ Pr
• Publication date: 1988
• ISBN 10: 0807114669
• ISBN 13: 9780807114667
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 55