Winter (Hobblebush Granite State Poetry, 6)

Poetry. In the sixth volume of the Hobblebush Granite State Poetry Series, Patricia Fargnoli weaves together themes of solitude, silence, and rebirth through vivid images of winter and the outdoors.

"'There is a prologue to the articulate-that is the silence,' said Derek Wolcott. 'When that silence arrives, it can be the beginning of art.' As a prologue to her poems, Pat Fargnoli has listened deeply to the silence of winter, and the result is a collection of poems that capture the flame of the fox, the hunger of horses, and the solitude of snow-'the flakes settling on your parka / like the dust from just-born stars.' What is articulated through these poems stems not from reticence, but from quiet observation and wisdom. Such great attention teaches us 'the natural world comes to join you / if you go out to meet it,' and so we come to understand that 'truth is found in silence.'"—Meg Kearney

"Open this book, and you will find 'a blind woman / who tells us / the dreams of the blind.' You will sense the snow in your hands and the 'scent of raspberries and lime, / a wooden chair rocking.' You will see a man who 'stands in a salt marsh up to his knees in the black water' and 'some stranger waving to another stranger, / waving.' Who are these strangers, reader, if not ourselves? Patricia Fargnoli loves this delicacy of suggestion, tells us the dreams of the blind, which are perhaps our own, tells us of the natural world, which around us is vanishing. This is a book where, 'before all the bridges have burned / the cows will come home.' Yes, for those who wait, 'Cometh the hour, cometh the cows.' And so, 'in the silence of horses,' one perhaps, hears one's own voice more clearly. And then come 'blind horses' with the naked woman, and also 'six white horses eating gray sky' and 'the horses rear and bolt with the wide-eyed children.' This is a bestiary of the spirit."—Ilya Kaminsky