Borrowed Tales (Confluence)

Poetry. In BORROWED TALES, personae congregate to live out their lives: Hamlet and Ophelia join the McGuffey Reader's droll schoolchildren to stand beside Junius, a deaf-mute black man from the early 1900s. When they entwine with Vince, a truculent middleschooler in south L.A, and Elaine, a returned Peace Corps Volunteer weighing in from Azerbaijan, their pasts seed a tangible present. Their lives, intractably immersed in history, release chance possibilties buried in every tale. Poems burst forth like entangled weeds in a camellia bush."Deborah Woodard's BORROWED TALES are novelistic, negotiating numerous twists and turns that are inventive and believable, playful and magical, but always rueful. Every tale here is earned. Poetry and prose converge, unearthing a voice at work that challenges the reader. BORROWED TALES is unique, personal, and luminous."—Yusef Komunyakaa