Angela Ball was my poetry professor in college (you know, the one who dressed as Sylvia Plath for Halloween complete with oven). I've read another one of her collections before so I thought I would give this one a try.
She has a tendency to delete words (articles, etc) from her lines. While this emphasizes some phrases, it also takes away from the overall experience when you delete too many. But I can say that reading these poems made me want to learn more about the women for whom they were written. Female poets are somewhat unknown to me and I would very much like to change that.
One stanza stood out for me from one of her poems.
"I stripped a licorice-striped pillow,
gaunt prisoner who lets out a wheeze
and a brown feather."
("Nora" Section 1; ll. 38-40, pg 28)
For some reason, that image stuck with me for the rest of the poem. I could actually imagine that pillow in my mind. I like that.
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