Three poets whose work regularly appears in Shenandoah have just released new books: The Gold Thread by Sarah Kennedy (Contributing Editor who often writes reviews for us), Secure the Shadow by Claudia Emerson (Contributing Editor whose poetry often appears on our site) and Thrall by Natasha Trethewey (whose poems often appear on our site). I highly recommend these three books, all of which are available through Amazon.
The Gold Thread is an extended meditation on the quest for meaning — spiritual or otherwise — in a troubled world. Moving seamlessly from considerations of our spiritual foremothers, women who sought liberation and selfhood through this communion with God, to lamentation for the current state of things, these fierce, elegant poems serve as a kind of cautionary tale. They remind us of the possibility of another fall brought on by the myopia of empire, by war and sins of injustice. Soberly and powerfully, Kennedy shows us that the golden thread is also what ties us to our past and, inevitably, to our future. — Natasha Trethewey
“Natasha Trethewey’s Thrall is simply the finest work of her already distinguished career. This remarkable collection carries the reader from troubling ekphrastic reflections upon colonial depictions of mixed race. . . to a stunningly personal album of self-portraits of the poet with her father. Rarely has any poetic intersection of cultural and personal histories felt more inevitable, more painful, or profound.”
— David St. John
“With superb artistry and a cool, but never cold, eye, Emerson sublimates her grief into elegant elegy, unsentimental and unforgettable — as when, driving past a house fire’s ‘bright-rising/enravishment,’ she does ‘not stop to watch someone else’s/ tragedy burn past this brief, nearly/ beautiful suspension that changes nothing.'” — Andrew Hudgins on Secure the Shadow
When Auden said that poetry makes nothing happen,
he was dead wrong!
