A Space Filled with Moving
ISBN: 9780822978985
Platform/Publisher: JSTOR / University of Pittsburgh Press
Digital rights: Users: unlimited; Printing: chapter; Download: chapter
Subjects: Language & Literature;

Anderson ( Cold Comfort ) writes in the poem ``Setting Out'' that ``even the most beautiful / of late summer days can cramp into a memory, uneasy /attention to what we haven't thought about in years.'' In attempting to transform her life experience into poetry, the poet is unfortunately unable to conjure up more than a ``cramp'' of emotion when relating the events of her past. She writes in ``Empirical'' that ``Everything sad that ever happened to me / I have mourned beside a river''--an interesting declaration, to be sure; but what follows is `string' is singular a string of vague metaphors and incongruous images. Anderson speaks much about the places where she has visited and lived, and often gets caught up in descriptive details at the expense of any emotional and spiritual resonance that an account of her activities could produce. Ultimately, the poet is quite up front about her reluctance to share anything other than occasionally clever wordplay with readers. She notes in ``Heart Labor'': ``You want me to name the specific sorrows? / They do not matter. You have your own.'' (May) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Maggie Anderson is the author of several poetry collections including, Years That Answer, Windfall, and Cold Comfort . She is the editor of Hill Daughter: New and Selected Poems of Louise McNeill , and co-editor of A Gathering of Poets , and Learning by Heart: Contemporary American Poetry about School . Anderson has received awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Ohio Arts Council, the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, and the MacDowell Colony. She teaches creative writing at Kent State University where she directs the Wick Poetry Program and edits the Wick Poetry Series through the Kent State University Press.

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