Mad Quick Hand of the Seashore

In this collection of poems, Frances Donovan presents a charged portrait of a woman of erotic complexity - the multiple attractions, the demands, the fantasies. "...you go with him down to the water's edge / and slide in and swim / and grab those lanky limbs of his and pull." Passion, anger, lust, envy, defiance, and cherishing can be found in these poems that widen from the personal to encompass myth. Sappho is there, as is Juno who looked after the women of Rome, and Diana, goddess of the hunt. There is hunting for love, there is basking in love, there is longing: "I wish I could send you/the bright blue sky of my body / cut loose from its moorings - / not the snake skin or the snake / but the buzzing within me/that has no name." It's sumptuous to plunge into these poems, most of which occur at the shore. -Grey Held, author of Two Star General and Spilled Milk The border-world of Frances Donovan's chapbook is sensually extravagant, lush with detail. Every seashore, highway, and body has its own messages to impart: "the buzz of the road," "the tiny singing in the trees," "the touch of your foot / makes me a beehive." Donovan's translation of these uncanny communiqués often reminds me of early H. D. Perhaps it's the locations, such as the "island of golden pears / I could not choose from, / and so lost them all." Or maybe it's Donovan's liminal condition of being attracted to many kinds of beauty. In any case, these poems are floral and gritty, Hellenistic and mundane, in unlikely but appealing proportions. -Lesley Wheeler, author of Radioland