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Rodney Wilder
, May 12, 2014
(view all comments by Rodney Wilder)
Sherry Chandler's poetry collected here unwinds with a quaint but smoldering nostalgia. The messages she threads through verdant metaphor and various observational poems come with a power that grabs the attention more elegantly than any poetry I've encountered lately. Poems like 'Ephemera' and 'Christmas Day, 2010' throb with a silent strength, the held breath of witness, and the nature-rich images Chandler conjures here are too potent to resist, sticking in the mind long after the poem has ended, concoctions of tension and authentic emotion like that in the multilayered slow burn 'Jaws of Life', which unfurls with the stillness of a bear trap but left me reeling and headed for a second reading by its ending.
'The Woodcarver's Wife' is a gamut of visceral expression, divulging the embers of eroticism and love while also exploring common thoughts with uncommon lenses. A lovely collection of poetry, and a pleasure to read.
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