Synopsis
Poems in (CREATURE SOUNDS FADE) slip through cracks into other worlds a little unfamiliar and they insist on the urgency of making what is unfamiliar familiar. You have to see how these poems sound in your head. As private and public exchange places with one another, we’ re let in to Compton’ s poems, we’ re invited to provide the variable. ― Dara Barrois/Dixon
This collection is, from the get-go, parenthetical, by which I mean layered horizontally in voice, architecture, inflection, and sound― the sound of the ever-fading world, and the soundtrack of the human interior. The tone is a shimmering dread with a backbeat of wonder, and the reigning approach to the line is the caesura― gaps, silences, and redactions. Everything teeters, transmogrifies; even the speaker’ s dress shifts from “ delicate bushbean pink” to “ tufted crest titmouse gray” and then into something like song: “ My dress my dress/o mess of shabbiness… ” Shanna Compton has managed to write poems that are utterly of the moment― “ Oh vomitous intimacy!” ― while harkening back to archetype, to the timeless strangeness of the natural world, imagination’ s source: “ the river/ the gold-green blur of trees,” steadying, sweet, a “ clear rivulet of water across the sandy waste.” This collection met my thirst right where it lives. “ Fellow navigators,” I urge you to read it. ― Diane Seuss
Shanna Compton’ s poems turn corners you wouldn’ t know were there if she weren’ t listening for them, locating them in order to give them away, listening to what’ s there and what’ s left out. Her astonishing feel, sound by sound, for shapeliness sprung from the edges and detail of lived experience, and her intense commitment to deep listening, are antidotes for and tough pushback against the constant threat of total immobility we all face every day. ― Anselm Berrigan
In a collection that is two parts feral eco-poetry, and one part stingingly personal reflection, Shanna Compton uses re-engineered punctuation as the soundtrack to her crucial work. Here, the woods and the animals do not merely appear as backdrops and extras, they are creatures in coexistence with the speaker, sometimes mingling until the narrative voice and the wilderness are indistinguishable from one another. … In Compton’ s work, there is a clear understanding that the land, and those who live upon it, must learn to coexist in some way. Compton doesn’ t claim to have the answers – her speaker(s) are often fractured and flawed even while they are earnest and moving. Readers of Camille Dungy, or Mary Oliver fans looking for something with teeth, will find this collection vital to their bookshelves. While Compton seems to implore readers to take action in some places, there is a sense of hope to be found and nurtured in these pages. ― Shannon Wolf
Her poems move across the page at quite a speed, from a human interior to an exterior and engagement with landscape and eco-concerns, enough that the two seeming-poles become nearly indistinguishable. ‘ The picked edges of the birches’ / bitter bark,’ she writes, to open the poem ‘ Paper Trees,’ ‘ Red-gold admixture / of mind a fleeting logical thread / she keeps tangling around / her spindle body [.]’ Compton plays with familiar landscapes and phrases fragmented and re-formed, twisting expectations and direction, constantly darting between lines, between trees, in an out of view in simultaneous outreach and retreat. Compton writes through a voice akin to something wild, something feral, one hesitant to step to far towards an encroaching array of human activity. ‘ My love I am a tangled I am choked & salted,’ she writes, to open ‘ Shorn Fur,’ ‘ My love I am feeling the itch of the buds soon to burst from my skin [.]’ ― rob mclennan
About the Author
Shanna Compton is a poet, printmaker, and book designer in Blue Hill, ME. She is the author of five books of poems: Creature Sounds Fade (Black Lawrence Press), Midwinter Constellation (coauthor, Black Lawrence Press), Brink (Bloof Books), For Girls & Other Poems (Bloof Books), Down Spooky (Winnow Press). Her poems have appeared in publications such as The Nation, American Poetry Review, the Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day series, Court Green, Bennington Review, Black Warrior Review, Typo, and The Best American Poetry anthology series.As a visual artist, she works in linocut, collage, monotype, screen print, and mixed media. Selected work is available through Hi Water Press, a growing list of local galleries and art shops, and a rotating schedule of seasonal markets and art festivals in Maine. She also freelances as a commercial book designer and illustrator, collaborating with more than a dozen independent publishers.
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