The Beekeeper's Wife

ISBN-13: 9781770670686 / Angielski / Twarda / 2011 / 64 str.

Shanda Hansma Blue; Zien Ooi

Opis

Shanda Hansma Blue s 'The Beekeeper s Wife' is a brilliant poetic argument between nature and the reader, between the beekeeper s wife and the beekeeper, between where a woman exists in her small and large spaces and the woman. It is a powerful rendition of the woman s world, a world where only we can exist. We are the keeper of the day, rising at dawn, before the sunrises, as if the sun s rise solely depended on us or as if nature itself were in the same complex relationship the woman has with the beekeeper. I have always believed that the poet is a philosopher, and Shanda proves this well in her fresh use of language, where the beekeeper s wife lives in the five percent zone/ of northern lights visibility./ Again, Hansma Blue shows us that the beekeeper s wife thinks of this as her numerical data/ her location on the statistical/ halo of Earth s aurora latitudes. In one of her powerful poems, 'Bargain', Shanda tells us, My grandfather always said of loud girls/ A whistling woman is like a crowing hen/." Indeed, Shanda Hansma Blue is a crowing hen, where she juxtapositions the world of her speaker, the beekeeper s wife and that of the beekeeper. This is not a book of poetry about nature despite its attention to the many vivid details of the nature around the speaker; it is a story about womanhood alongside that of manhood. Here nature and woman collide, co-exist, argue, and survive, all in a relationship to the man in the story. Here, the here and the now come together or collide at times, and yet the constancy of nature keeps the beekeeper s wife grounded even though it is she who keeps the world of both her and the beekeeper grounded. Shanda Hansma Blue s debut book of poetry brings to us a captivating story that is relevant in our new world where nature and humankind are at war. This metaphoric telling of the story of the beekeeper s wife who keeps the beekeeper who keeps the bees will make you wonder and laugh at the same time. Hansma Blue s picturesque use of language will haunt you long after reading this book. -Patricia Jabbeh Wesley, author of Where the Road Turns-"