Unmentionables Cl

by Fennelly,Beth Ann

• ISBN13: 9780393066050
• ISBN10: 0393066053
• Edition: 00
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2008-04-17
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Summary

With elegant wordplay and her usual subversive wit, Beth Ann Fennelly explores the "unmentionable"'”not only what is considered too bold but also what can't be said because words are insufficient. In sections of short narratives, she questions our everyday human foibles. Three longer sequences display her admirable reach and fierce intelligence: One, "The Kudzu Chronicles," is a rollicking piece about the transplanted weed. Another, "Bertha Morisot: Retrospective," conjures up a complex life portrait of the French impressionist painter. The third presents fifteen dream songs that virtually out-Berryman Berryman.

Table of Contents

First Warm Day in a College Town	p. 15
Cow Tipping	p. 18
We'd Been Drinking Champagne When I Found It	p. 20
Souvenir	p. 23
Berthe Morisot: Retrospective	p. 27
Elegy for the Footie Pajamas	p. 47
The Mommy at the Zoo	p. 49
Because People Ask What My Daughter Will Think of My Poems When She's 16	p. 53
To JC and DL on the Opening of the Sestina Bar	p. 55
The Kudzu Chronicles	p. 61
Not Knowing What He's Missing	p. 83
I Provide for You, Boy Child, Like God	p. 84
Poem in the Ninth Month	p. 85
Of Two Minds	p. 86
Say You Waved: A Dream Song Cycle	p. 91
The River That Was My Father	p. 109
When Did You Know You Wanted to Be a Writer?	p. 112
Eleven Questions	p. 115
The Welcoming	p. 117
Notes	p. 120
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