PAULA BOHINCE
BOOKS
|
|
DESCRIPTION
A poetic representation of PTSD and its evocative bewilderments, Paula Bohince's mesmerizing new collection, A Violence,
is written at inflection points: a waking from dissociation borne from a harrowing childhood; a breakdown; and a struggle toward wholeness
by means of mystified recollection amid ecological disturbances. Praised for poems that "reward enormously upon first encounter, and only
more so upon subsequent reads" (The Rumpus), Bohince is here alert to surprise, the enthralling image "rushing through such wreckage
a brain becomes." Contemplating vulnerability and resilience in the entwined human and natural worlds, with a voice precise and powerful,
A Violence is a haunting collection that builds symphonically to recover a self "gone away," where the ordinary is
imbued with transcendental significance.
|
|
PRAISE
EXCERPT
Black Swans
The next morning we met at the Lough, Aisling
and me, without the men. How relaxing.
Drenched as in pitch or ashes, the silhouettes floated by,
bred in Australia, nevertheless Irish. The mutes
might bully them, coral-billed as Audrey's signature
Breakfast at Tiffany's shade. We strolled behind the huge
wobbly wheels of the carriage. More fragile, stranger
than the cloudlike others. An emerald dream of money
had lingered, so it felt good to be awake
in the rain, her speaking Gaelic to the baby, waves
of babble soothing my limbic system.
Last night, at dinner, a male professor explained his
productivity as her nipples expressed milky flowers.
White marble of municipal buildings, statuesque obsidian
swan reflections sunk in the basin. What nouvelle
cuisine had arrived clattering from a gaggle of waiters?
Some frazzled egg adrift in the beet's magenta?
(first appeared in The Irish Times)
A Brief History of the Cocktail
Yes of forsythia against the limitless ivy, a nude posed in a garden
against the silver maple pinwheeling its children into a gown around her
chime of the cliff-hanging falcon's talons against a rabbit,
wheezing soldier in a field, gunpowder tainting the cake in his pocket
jet fuel over the Pacific, waking to a hula in a zephyr,
the bride deplaning onto an island chain, bowing to leis of plumeria
the mallow of nurses' shoes, their news, the black sedan of
a telephone spreading it like a virus and, after, the scent of a cedar closet
white gloves of a mare, in heat, pawing clover, the sail of a Spitfire
cresting a hill in San Francisco, fin against sunset
rosin on the cello's catgut, a honeycombed queen calling home
her lovers, a Basquiat above the head of an ascetic, chaos over order
magenta in the thorns, shy to the shears, making the blue jays bluer,
someone on the bed's chenille edge composing an oratorio of medicines
the bartender in his icepick scars twisting zest over his creation, wheel
and butane of his Zippo kissing as the citrus, at last, expresses
(first appeared in POETRY)
With a fiercely observant eye, and with disarming, wide-awake music, Paula Bohince considers what's to be made of all that's been diminished. Negotiating the aching beauty and fragile persistence of a damaged world, A Violence is ecstatic, woeful, and gorgeous.
—Mark Doty
Paula Bohince's poems—urgent, melodious, and always surprising—articulate the known world in lines of stunning clarity. A book for every reader interested in the achievements of poetry today.
—Cynthia Zarin
EXCERPT
Black Swans
The next morning we met at the Lough, Aisling
and me, without the men. How relaxing.
Drenched as in pitch or ashes, the silhouettes floated by,
bred in Australia, nevertheless Irish. The mutes
might bully them, coral-billed as Audrey's signature
Breakfast at Tiffany's shade. We strolled behind the huge
wobbly wheels of the carriage. More fragile, stranger
than the cloudlike others. An emerald dream of money
had lingered, so it felt good to be awake
in the rain, her speaking Gaelic to the baby, waves
of babble soothing my limbic system.
Last night, at dinner, a male professor explained his
productivity as her nipples expressed milky flowers.
White marble of municipal buildings, statuesque obsidian
swan reflections sunk in the basin. What nouvelle
cuisine had arrived clattering from a gaggle of waiters?
Some frazzled egg adrift in the beet's magenta?
(first appeared in The Irish Times)
A Brief History of the Cocktail
Yes of forsythia against the limitless ivy, a nude posed in a garden
against the silver maple pinwheeling its children into a gown around her
chime of the cliff-hanging falcon's talons against a rabbit,
wheezing soldier in a field, gunpowder tainting the cake in his pocket
jet fuel over the Pacific, waking to a hula in a zephyr,
the bride deplaning onto an island chain, bowing to leis of plumeria
the mallow of nurses' shoes, their news, the black sedan of
a telephone spreading it like a virus and, after, the scent of a cedar closet
white gloves of a mare, in heat, pawing clover, the sail of a Spitfire
cresting a hill in San Francisco, fin against sunset
rosin on the cello's catgut, a honeycombed queen calling home
her lovers, a Basquiat above the head of an ascetic, chaos over order
magenta in the thorns, shy to the shears, making the blue jays bluer,
someone on the bed's chenille edge composing an oratorio of medicines
the bartender in his icepick scars twisting zest over his creation, wheel
and butane of his Zippo kissing as the citrus, at last, expresses
(first appeared in POETRY)