Girlwood
3.5/5
()
About this ebook
Winner of the 2012 John Hirsch Award for Most Promising Manitoba Writer
A linguistically inventive exaltation, a wild ride down into the privacies, the here-and-goneness of girlhood.
In Girlwood, Jennifer Still's second collection, her poems come of age: they take the dare; they cross out of sapling and into maturity's thicket. But the poems don’t leave the girl behind, they bring her along: as sylph, as raconteur, as witness, as pure, unstoppable bravado. These songs of liberation and confinement arise from the rich and mysterious connection between mother and daughter. Here, the mother figure is as vulnerable as the daughter, caged by domestic duty, by the fear that snakes through sexuality, the longing and the repulsion that accompany mortal desire. The daughter is at once compassionate and defiant. This is the paradox at the heart of this collection. "Mother, divine me," Jennifer Still writes, and later, "Mother, spare me." Between these two phrases, which are both plea and command, we experience all the tangled pathways between mother and daughter, the cries of devotion and the congested laments.
Jennifer Still
Jennifer Still's first collection of poems, Saltations (Thistledown Press, 2005) was nominated for three Saskatchewan Book Awards. Poems from Girlwood were finalists in the 2008 CBC Literary Awards. After living her adult years until just recently in Saskatchewan, Jennifer now lives in Winnipeg with her husband and two children.
Related to Girlwood
Related ebooks
Mean Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Fabric Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5If I Were In a Cage I'd Reach Out For You Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRequeening: Poems Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCommon Place Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Smell of Good Mud Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Out of the Darkness Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCutting Room Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Rhetorical Wanderlust Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Quiet Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRelease the Fireflies Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAprilverse Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsdear inner child Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDreaming of Bliss Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsIs This Scary?: Poems Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsNow You're the Enemy: Poems Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Play With Me Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsStaying Right Here Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWhen Rains Come Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCrimes Where Your Heart Should Be Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Before I Get Too Bad Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWho Are We Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Heart Of A Comet Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Identity Thief Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMy Index of Slightly Horrifying Knowledge: Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5From Waves, I Rise: A Collection of Poems Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5May: An epic poem about youth Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Years, Months, and Days Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5Fuckery Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsauRoRa Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Poetry For You
The Iliad: The Fitzgerald Translation Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Odyssey: (The Stephen Mitchell Translation) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Divine Comedy: Inferno, Purgatory, and Paradise Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Inward Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Prophet Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Edgar Allan Poe: The Complete Collection Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Dante's Inferno: The Divine Comedy, Book One Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Iliad of Homer Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Twenty love poems and a song of despair Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dante's Divine Comedy: Inferno Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5For colored girls who have considered suicide/When the rainbow is enuf Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Way Forward Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Love Her Wild: Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Canterbury Tales Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Odyssey Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Daily Stoic: A Daily Journal On Meditation, Stoicism, Wisdom and Philosophy to Improve Your Life Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Selected Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Letters to a Young Poet (Rediscovered Books): With linked Table of Contents Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Beyond Thoughts: An Exploration Of Who We Are Beyond Our Minds Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Leaves of Grass: 1855 Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Complete Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5You Better Be Lightning Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Tao Te Ching: A New English Version Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Bedtime Stories for Grown-ups Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Beowulf Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson (ReadOn Classics) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Pillow Thoughts II: Healing the Heart Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Divine Comedy: Inferno Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Gilgamesh: A New English Version Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Related categories
Reviews for Girlwood
1 rating0 reviews
Book preview
Girlwood - Jennifer Still
GIRLWOOD
GIRLWOOD
JENNIFER STILL
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Still, Jennifer, 1973-
Girlwood / Jennifer Still.
Poems.
ISBN 978-1-926829-66-1
I. Title.
PS8637.T54G57 2010 C811’.6 C2010-907672-9
Copyright © Jennifer Still, 2011
We acknowledge the Canada Council for the Arts, the Government
of Canada through the Canada Book Fund, and the Ontario Arts
Council for their support of our publishing program.
The cover photograph, 68 Girdwood Crescent, 1975,
was taken
by Jim Still.
The author photograph was taken by Jennifer Beaudry.
Brick Books
Box 20081
431 Boler Road
London, Ontario
N6K 4G6
Canada
www.brickbooks.ca
To the Girdwood girls;
and for Abby, for Joan.
And we start, with a new and terrible energy, to write the
poems of the imagined real place.
Robert Kroetsch
Not fragments but metonymy. Duration. Language makes tracks.
Lyn Hejinian
SKIPPING SONG
you are the other side of the tracks girl
the step around the crack or you’ll break your mother’s back girl
the itsy bitsy teeny weeny rack girl
the last to be picked for the team and the first to get to first base girl
you’ve got to color within the black lines girl
you’ve got your pennies lined up on the rail girl
you’ve got your boxcar vibe and your bangs combed high
and your hand held tight to the tremor girl—
TRACKS
SKIPPING SONG
TRACK 1
NEST
TRACK 2
SNAKESKIN
TRACK 3
THE HUMMINGBIRD
VIGNETTES
TRACK 4
MOTH
TRACK 5
LEAF
NOTES
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
TRACK 1
you could be at every turn the story of the girl you were, there are things you shouldn’t be seeing now from such a comfortable seat, two feet above disaster Nike high-top wedged in the rails, you learn to move swiftly from a stuck position, when the penny trembles and you wear it, your fear of gym