OTHER MAIDENS
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It’s not easy for poems to speak to both displacement and belonging but Other Maidens does. These works draw on the nexus of family and culture, weaving myth amongst its truths and truths into the lyric stories of its author. Its theme often suggests, rather than points to the voice in these poems moving away from experiential narrative to the borderland of dreams in the dense surface/tensed like the skin of a snake/throbbing/like the heart of an animal/prehistoric and blind. Philosophical, fierce, sensual and resolutely planted in the world of creation, Other Maidens creates a profound dialogue between poet and reader of a life well lived and a strong spirit where Dancers hold their bodies like candles/like altars on the land of terra incognita, and life is rarely firmly underfoot but something other, and can never be stable by its very nature.
~ Lois P. Jones, author of Night Ladder
In Other Maidens, Toti O’Brien masterfully choreographs shifting perceptions of self and the other in a soulful dance with reality. These intuitive, courageous poems explore the elusive and illusive core of grief and wonder, fear and joy, estrangement and intimacy. Cadences of myth harbor tidal emotion; they seek identity, reflect on our relationships with mirrors and animals, our sexuality, and our gods. In these poems, we can feel the undulating vertebrae of our struggles, hear the wingbeats of unspoken or mysterious desire, speak with forgotten wounds and shadows, seek the depths of forgiveness, and break the surface of our shared earth, encountering a lost Eden that welcomes us every spring.
~ William O’Daly, author of Yarrow and Smoke and translator of Book of Twilight, by Pablo Neruda
In her new collection, Other Maidens, Toti O'Brien guides us through arabesques, childhood memories of tailless lizards, hunting jaguars, seasons of war, familial mythologies of downfall and sunken fortunes. We visit lavish revenge, the death of Joan of Arc and Penelope, Queen of Ithaca eminent anticipation of reunion. Through “insolvable puzzles,” mythology bloom into, “Puffs of memory / expired.” Startling and luminous, we plunge the depths of the ocean, of love, of dance (the body), and of memory clawing their way into the present. Set in themed sections, O’Brien examines the debris of all that is vanished, and the life that sits between the mind and the mouth, “I think of the word in my tongue / that means all / a fruit, a stone and a weapon / gathering life and death in a fistful.” Witty, sad, tragic, and magical, O’Brien stunningly depicts the instability of freedom in the stories we tell ourselves, “You are the kindling / to your own holocaust / Slowly, you become myth” This is a complex and haunting collection of poetry.
—Geoffrey Gatza, author of Apollo, a Ballet and A Dog Lost in the Brick City of Outlawed Trees.
~ Lois P. Jones, author of Night Ladder
In Other Maidens, Toti O’Brien masterfully choreographs shifting perceptions of self and the other in a soulful dance with reality. These intuitive, courageous poems explore the elusive and illusive core of grief and wonder, fear and joy, estrangement and intimacy. Cadences of myth harbor tidal emotion; they seek identity, reflect on our relationships with mirrors and animals, our sexuality, and our gods. In these poems, we can feel the undulating vertebrae of our struggles, hear the wingbeats of unspoken or mysterious desire, speak with forgotten wounds and shadows, seek the depths of forgiveness, and break the surface of our shared earth, encountering a lost Eden that welcomes us every spring.
~ William O’Daly, author of Yarrow and Smoke and translator of Book of Twilight, by Pablo Neruda
In her new collection, Other Maidens, Toti O'Brien guides us through arabesques, childhood memories of tailless lizards, hunting jaguars, seasons of war, familial mythologies of downfall and sunken fortunes. We visit lavish revenge, the death of Joan of Arc and Penelope, Queen of Ithaca eminent anticipation of reunion. Through “insolvable puzzles,” mythology bloom into, “Puffs of memory / expired.” Startling and luminous, we plunge the depths of the ocean, of love, of dance (the body), and of memory clawing their way into the present. Set in themed sections, O’Brien examines the debris of all that is vanished, and the life that sits between the mind and the mouth, “I think of the word in my tongue / that means all / a fruit, a stone and a weapon / gathering life and death in a fistful.” Witty, sad, tragic, and magical, O’Brien stunningly depicts the instability of freedom in the stories we tell ourselves, “You are the kindling / to your own holocaust / Slowly, you become myth” This is a complex and haunting collection of poetry.
—Geoffrey Gatza, author of Apollo, a Ballet and A Dog Lost in the Brick City of Outlawed Trees.
*** REVIEWS ***
Review by George Longenecker in The Main Rag Vol 27,1 HERE
Review by Michael Hogan in Bits, Bobs and Books 3.15.21 HERE
. Review by Lynne Jambor in Colorado Boulevard 2.5.21 HERE
Review by Linda Imbler in Highland Park Poetry, 1.1.2021, HERE
* * * * CALENDAR OF READING EVENTS * * * *
10/17/2020 - 3 to 5 pm P.T. - Feature reading at SATURDAY AFTERNOON POETRY
Zoom Event - HERE
12/4/2020 - 4 to 6 pm P.T - Book Launch at Poets on Site Zoom Meeting
Listen to poet Yin Xiaoyuan perform my poem "Dance" in Mandarin