In marvelous tactile poems, poet Bernice Rendrick
gives us vignettes of how hard our forebears had to work
and the burdens (both emotional and physical) they shouldered so that we might be here.
The opening poem
"Trunk in the Attic" [p. 7]
is a perfect introduction to this chapbook:
both poem and chapbook offer
a collection of pivotal and important memories, made real by sensory data.
In "Freight Train" [p. 9]
a huge train
"rumbles / through my ribs".
Nervous of her father's anger in "Falling Star" [p. 11] the child
" crossed thresholds / stiff-shouldered as if / they were mined with explosives".
In "Grandmother's Onion Sandwiches" [p. 14]
her grandma teaches her to smell
"the season's first green onions"
and
"what spring was, / the sweet rising of roots / and decaying leaves, the mud puddles".
Through out we feel how care and nurturing from the women hold
together the community and the raising the children while the men folk
leave as tramps of freight trains or,
as in
"The Five Brothers at the Family Dinner",
"are torn; here, yet moving into harsh lives, /
on their backs under tractors and trucks / or bailing hay".
And the poem ends with the poet's mother moving to California
with her young daughters, where the poet learned to run:
| Chapbook title:
| Trainsong
| Permafrost Chapbook:
The Nightmare Parable and three others.
|
| Median pages of poems:
| 29
| 25 (20-27)
|
| Median number of poems:
| 19
| 19 (17-20)
|
| Book title:
| Not a poem title
| A poem title for all but one book.
|
| Themes:
| A child's perception of adults in a 1930s childhood
| The other chapbooks were on less concrete topics: wisdom;
inspiration; transcendence; life; death; loss.
|
| Vocabulary and tropes:
| Direct.
| Mostly direct.
Only one of the four has many metaphors, similes,
and obscurities, and 2 pages of notes.
|
| Tone:
| Natural.
| Natural except for one of the four that is jittery and jumpy.
|
| Forms:
| Free verse.
| Mostly Free verse.
|
| Initially in Bardsong
| --
| 1 Permafrost
Chapbook Contest Winner.
|
| Initially in Barrow Street
| --
| 1 Permafrost Chapbook Contest Winner.
|
| Initially in Blue Mesa Review
| --
| 1 Permafrost Chapbook Contest Winner. |
| Initially in The Briar Cliff Review
| --
| 1 Permafrost Chapbook Contest Winner.
|
| Initially in Chiron Review
| --
| 1 Permafrost Chapbook Contest Winner.
|
| Initially in Coastlines
| Trainsong.
| 0
|
| Initially in Collaboration of Poets and Painters
| Trainsong.
| 0
|
| Initially in Colombia: A Journal of Literature and Art
| --
| 1 Permafrost Chapbook Contest Winner.
|
| Initially in CQ
| Trainsong.
| 0
|
| Initially in Cream City Review
| --
| 1 Permafrost Chapbook Contest Winner.
|
| Initially in Cumberland Poetry Review
| --
| 1 Permafrost Chapbook Contest Winner.
|
| Initially in DIAGRAM
| --
| 1 Permafrost Chapbook Contest Winner.
|
| Initially in For She is the Tree of Life
| Trainsong.
| 0
|
| Initially in Georgia State University Review
| --
| 1 Permafrost Chapbook Contest Winner.
|
| Initially in A Ghost at Heart's Edge
| Trainsong.
| 0
|
| Initially in Global City Review
| --
| 1 Permafrost Chapbook Contest Winner.
|
| Initially in The Harvard Gay and Lesbian Review
| --
| 1 Permafrost Chapbook Contest Winner.
|
| Initially in Hunger Mountain
| --
| 1 Permafrost Chapbook Contest Winner.
|
| Initially in If I Had a Hammer
| Trainsong.
| 0
|
| Initially in The Journal
| --
| 1 Permafrost Chapbook Contest Winner.
|
| Initially in Kansas Quarterly
| Trainsong.
| 0
|
| Initially in Kimera
| Gentry
| 2 Permafrost Chapbook Contest Winner.
|
| Initially in Lighthouse Point
| Trainsong.
| 0
|
| Initially in Margie
| --
| 1 Permafrost Chapbook Contest Winner.
|
| Initially in The Mississippi Review
| --
| 1 Permafrost Chapbook Contest Winner.
|
| Initially in Montserrat Review
| Trainsong.
| 0
|
| Initially in Mot Juste
| --
| 1 Permafrost Chapbook Contest Winner.
|
| Initially in National Poetry Review
| --
| 1 Permafrost Chapbook Contest Winner.
|
| Initially in Nimrod International Journal
| --
| 1 Permafrost Chapbook Contest Winner.
|
| Initially in North American Review
| --
| 2 Permafrost Chapbook Contest Winner.
|
| Initially in Northwest Review
| --
| 1 Permafrost Chapbook Contest Winner.
|
| Initially in The Notre Dame Review
| --
| 1 Permafrost Chapbook Contest Winner.
|
| Initially in Painted Bride Quarterly
| --
| 1 Permafrost Chapbook Contest Winner.
|
| Initially in Phoebe
| --
| 1 Permafrost Chapbook Contest Winner.
|
| Initially in Poetry New York
| --
| 1 Permafrost Chapbook Contest Winner.
|
| Initially in Poetry Southeast
| --
| 1 Permafrost Chapbook Contest Winner.
|
| Initially in Porter Gulch Review
| Trainsong.
| 0
|
| Initially in Portland Pen
| --
| 1 Permafrost Chapbook Contest Winner.
|
| Initially in Portland Review
| Trainsong.
| 0
|
| Initially in Prairie Schooner
| --
| 1 Permafrost Chapbook Contest Winner.
|
| Initially in Quarry West
| Trainsong.
| 0
|
| Initially in Rattle
| --
| 1 Permafrost Chapbook Contest Winner.
|
| Initially in RHINO
| --
| 1 Permafrost Chapbook Contest Winner.
|
| Initially in River City
| --
| 1 Permafrost Chapbook Contest Winner.
|
| Initially in Smartish Pace
| --
| 1 Permafrost Chapbook Contest Winner.
|
| Initially in Sojourn
| --
| 1 Permafrost Chapbook Contest Winner.
|
| Initially in Sonoma Mandala
| Trainsong.
| 0
|
| Initially in Verve
| Trainsong.
| 0
|
| Initially in West Branch
| --
| 1 Permafrost Chapbook Contest Winner.
|
| Initially in Willow Springs
| --
| 1 Permafrost Chapbook Contest Winner.
|
Her poems have appeared in various poetry journals and anthologies.
Highlights of Poetry.
