Synopsis
It's easy to see why Terry Wolverton has a reputation as a right-on facilitator of writing workshops: I couldn't find a wasted word in these poems in spite of the rhetorical amplification that governs many of them, nor a threadbare syllogism in the often staccato, sometimes surreal thought-processes along which we are guided. The short "Shadow" section takes the self, the subjectivity, and the Other, as objects of phenomenological (and Lacanian) investigation under the aspects of Specter, Surveillance, Photophobia, Groundhog, Death, and Paradox. It defamiliarizes the proverbial Shadows of Doubt, of Shadow-Boxing, of Your Smile, of Me and My Shadow, and of the Five O'Clock Beard. The transitional "difficult praise" does indeed lead us to litanies of praise for what no one this side of Whitman has a good word for--e.g. Denial, Ultraviolet Rays, Pandora's Box, Bad Drivers, and Traffic on the 405 Freeway--as well as original takes on what everyone else praises but without Wolverton's angular, elliptical, imaginative inner eye: e.g. Blueberries, The Senses, Heaven, Green, Living, Singing, Flowers. Eventually she finds the cosmic (and cosmically comic) capacity to praise both "everyone" and "anyone," not to mention "nothing."
These poems vibrate with controlled breathing, like American mantras infused by a higher plane of Eastern scriptural spirituality. I have the highest admiration for this achievement by a poet and human being who has spent a lifetime in preparation for such a crowning masterpiece. It's been said that some are "poets born" and others "poets made." Terry Wolverton is both. Shadow and Praise is a Himalayan Peak rising from the asphalt desert (and I love deserts) of Southern California. Yet it is start-to-finish in the accessible language that has always, for me at least, constituted the most enjoyable and rewarding tradition within SoCal poetry and, indeed, American Literature.
Gerald Locklin
Professor Emeritus of English
California State University, Long Beach
About the Author
Terry Wolverton is author of eight books: Embers, a novel-in-poems; Insurgent Muse: life and art at the Woman's Building, a memoir; The Labrys Reunion and Bailey's Beads, novels;Breath, a collection of short stories, and three collections of poetry: Black Slip, Mystery Bruiseand Shadow and Praise. A new novel, Stealing Angel, will be published in 2011.
She has also edited fourteen literary anthologies, including the award winning six-volume series,His: Brilliant New Fiction by Gay Men and Hers: Brilliant New Fiction by Lesbians.
She spent 13 years at the Woman's Building as an artist, student, teacher and administrator, eventually serving as Executive Director. She is the founder of Writers At Work, a creative writing center in Los Angeles, where she teaches fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry. She is also an Associate Faculty Mentor in the MFA Writing Program at Antioch University Los Angeles.
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