Tess GallagherRecensioni

There were many very good poems in this longish volume of poetry. The more I read poetry, also, I find I am more in touch with the differences between poets, having read this book almost immediately after reading Ellen Bass's Like A Beggar.

In the Company of Flowers on page 9 is one of the first poems I took note of.

In The Company of Flowers

all day, coming away
like an ordinary person who
might have been at a till. Thinking
as I dug into the earth of my mother
who, when my youngest brother
died, was taken in
by beauty, not as consolation
but because she found him
there as she made the garden.

Each day she tended it
he kept a little more
of her. If ever I doubt
the power of the dead, I walk
her garden in May, rhododendrons
so red, so white their clustered goblets
spill translucent tongues of light at the rim
of the sea. And it is ordinary

to be so accompanied,
so fused to the silence of all that,
as it eludes me, as I am taken in.

Surely my reappearance must wear
the borrowed abundance she
gave me that morning
I was born

Others in this book that stood out for me are Blind Dog/Seeing Girl, Dream cancel, Glass impresses, and Correction. Here is a bit from Blind Dog/Seeing Girl that I liked:

"Even the girl knows in her sighted
witnessing: we are each
lost, and beholden until,
with deer-like tentative stepping,
each invisible threshold yields, and
still calling in her useless voice,
the girl forfeits all notion of possessing
the zigzagged way her exactly there dog
at last hazards herself into

her waiting arms. And isn't it joy
the dog expresses as the world
dissolves into just that moment
she has magically united with
her very own missing girl."

Tess Gallagher's poetry is expressive and pithy and I really enjoyed the twists and turns my mind had to make to figure out the meaning of what she was trying to express in her poetry. She spends time in the west of Ireland as well as the pacific northwest of the United States and she writes poetry inspired by both of these locations as well as others. I will definitely keep a look out for more of her books going forward.

Gallagher is best known for her poetry, but this collection proves she is no slouch at the short fiction genre. I enjoyed nearly every selection here, which is not something I can often say about a book of short stories. For the most part, these have a true beginning, middle and end, and you feel like you've heard a Story when you finish one. They don't always "go" anywhere, but they are nearly always a fine place to "be". The characters have depth and life immediately (how does she do that?), the language is often poetic without being overblown, and there is a lot of wry humor. Gallagher gets under the surface of ordinary people, exposing the pithy centers of their lives, and with her guidance we can appreciate the mythic elements of the quotidian.

Stories of relentlessly ordinary people most of whom live outside the urban sprawl. In each life is some exaggerated level of connection to and or observation of that which makes all of us resonate at life's edges and cracks.

"Red Ensign" was my favorite story - unexpected fun despite the near 'drowning' -
with the other stories not so intriguing (with lovely poetic sentences excepted)
until "Rain flooding Your Campfire" met first expectations.

A lot of dead husbands and animal abuse unwelcome.½

There are a few really good stories in this collection, "Beneficiaries" and "The Wimp" but overall I felt like Tess Gallagher was just watching the world of young to old to middle-aged women floating by. She has some brilliant, arresting openings but overall The Lover of Horses failed to provide me with a whole lot more than slight social observations.

Distant Rain records a conversation between the eloquent American poet Tess Gallagher and the renowned Japanese novelist and Buddhist nun Jakucho Setouchi that took place in 1990 at Jakuan, Setouchi's home temple, in Sagano, Japan.
Gallagher had recently experienced the death of her husband, Raymond Carver, an internationally renowned short story writer. In a frank and at times humorous exchange, the two women trade observations about love and loss, and about the role of writing in coping with grief.

Their words, reproduced in both English and Japanese, unfold accordion-style across the rich colors and striking imagery of artist Keiko Hara's wood-block and stencil prints. Complemented by the exquisite lettering of typographer Maki Yamashita and under the guidance of master bookbinder Atsuo Ikuta, Distant Rain is not only a moving tribute to the sustaining power of love but also a stunning example of the art of book design.

preferred the early poems in this collection

Brilliant. As usual.

At the Owl Woman Saloon has 16 stories set primarily in the Northwestern United States. Some deal with people who work in logging, a major regional industry, but themes of aging and widowhood a paramount. Like most short story collections, some stories spoke to me in very direct ways, and stood out from the rest:

- The Leper: this story recounts everyday events for a couple living in a seaside village. Gallagher captures a moment in time without attempting to tie up loose ends. The woman takes a phone call from a distraught friend. Funeral flowers are mistakenly delivered to her home. She watches horses swimming in the sea. Small, ordinary and yet extraordinary occurrences all beautifully portrayed.

- Coming and Going: Emily, recently widowed, is visited by a deputy Marshall looking for her husband regarding a legal dispute. She directs him to where her husband has "relocated." I could feel her pain while also laughing out loud at her deception.

- Mr Woodriff's Neckties: A man observes his neighbors as one of them declines and eventually passes away. A good deed brings a sense of calm. I loved this story; it made me think about mortality and the importance of enjoying today because you never know what the future holds:
On Sundays I see her gathering these same roses, now that they've bloomed, to take to the cemetery. It makes me wonder if they both knew while they were planting them that this was out there in the future. Or maybe they were so involved with earth and root balls and whether the holes were deep enough that they didn't trouble to think ahead, except that eventually there would be roses. Maybe their minds were mercifully clear of the future. That's what I hope, anyway. (p. 148)

- The Woman who Prayed: the book ends with this powerful story of a woman who discovers her husband is having an affair, and handles the situation in a unique and admirable way.

Gallagher is first a poet, which is clear in her beautiful prose. More than characters or plot, her stories are best appreciated by letting her words, imagery and metaphor wash over you.½

Tess Gallagher's Instructions To The Double is an interesting work of poetry. Not really cutting edge but not your sunset and pretty flowers either. Kidnaper is a really intriguing poem that starts a great mix of works. I very much enjoyed these poems.½

In Willingly Tess Gallagher takes mundane and painful events and turns them into beautiful poems. That's what good poets do.

Memory is a theme throughout this collection. She begins with "Maybe I'm seven in the open field-" as she goes on to describe running through the field as the rain begins, her head back and mouth open to catch the drops. In many of these poems she eulogizes her father's death, weaving together memories of fishing trips, farms, and hospitals. She writes at the end of "Boat Ride," "Good memory,/ if you are such a boat, tell me/ we did not falter in the vastness /when we walked ashore." In fact, several poems are about caring for others who are either sick or mourning, but she is never heavy -handed. There is always a sense of light in these poems.

And there is room for humor too. She meditates on the strangeness of long distance phone calls, and on a trip to Asia where she ate sparrow. In "Linoleum" she contemplates spirituality and materialism as she documents a journey to the grocery store.

She ends with a "Woodcutting on Lost Mountain," which captures a conversation and trip with her brother and niece to cut wood. Her brother has taken on traits of their father, and Gallagher sees herself in her niece. The refrain is "It's a wonder we ever grew up."

Collection of romantic poems by American poet, Tess Gallagher, more commonly referred to as Raymond Carver's wife.

There should be a golden rule about introductions that states 'writers should never refer to other writers who are indisputably greater than themselves'. Sadly, no such rule exists, and, in the introduction to this collection, Gallagher not only name-checks superior poems she actually quotes them (and also uses quotes to introduce each section of the volume). This leads to the uneasy realisation that these quotes are the best poems in the book.

It's not that Gallagher is a particularly bad poet, she just strikes me as a little overwrought, and are not the best love poems deceptively simple? Too often reading these poems, it seems that Gallagher had an idea of the kiss being a central romantic image, and then decided to write poetry about it. The first problem stems from the fact that she kills this central image by sheer volume (24 poems have the word kiss in the title alone) - it's like gilding the lily with a sledgehammer. The second problem is more fundamental, by picturing the image from so many angles, much of this poetry just isn't very good - full of average prose chopped up, clunky or staid metaphors, and failing to convey the emotion of love: too much of the head, and not enough of the heart.

Disappointing.

ps...Bill Knott, who on the cover states, "This is the best book of love poems since Neruda's., takes pleasure in describing himself as "the World's Worst Living Poet".