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The
poems in Still Listening depend on memory and dreams as their
inexhaustible source. They describe a sense of living between
two worlds - the romantic America of childhood and the folklore
of the remembered Irish past. Angela Patten's poems illustrate the
notion that making poetry is the process of making the familiar
strange, of drawing attention to a wisdom and humour that is intrinsic
to everyday Irish speech. The poems in Still Listening come
directly out of an oral tradition in which family troubles are turned
into familiar stories that can be retold and relished again and
again. It is these stories and their peculiarly Irish turns
of phrase that lend a characteristic music and texture to the poems.
Patten has spent more than twenty years trying to reconcile the
inhibiting influences of the Irish Catholic church and her
working-class roots with her affection for her Irish Catholic working-class
family and the richness of her oral heritage.
 Angela
Patten is an Irish expatriate, living in Vermont. A
native of Dublin, she emigrated to the United States in 1977.
She received a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of
Vermont in 1986 and a Master of Fine Arts in Poetry from Vermont
College in 1996. Her poems have appeared in poetry journals, including
The Literary Review, Prairie Schooner, Sojourner, The Women's
Forum, Voices International, Potato Eyes, The Waterford Review,
Markings and others. Her work is included in Onion River:
Six Vermont Poets, published by Onion River Press, Vermont in
1997. Ms. Patten teaches poetry and is employed as Development
Director of the Vermont Arts Council.
A
Poem from
Still Listening
by ANGELA PATTEN
Seapoint
Mother's
swimming away from shore,
the blue water sparkling around her.
She turns, waves to us,
her right arm lifted in a blessing.
I
cry out but the sea picks up my words,
hurls a shower of pebbles at my feet.
Straining forward, taut as a fishing-line,
I am willing her home for nothing
so conscious as love.
Only that without her nothing works.
The Little Sisters of the Poor look after us
but the nun's been up the chimney
and the doctor roars at us to be still.
I
can't eat when she goes away.
Father hangs a pheasant from the backdoor knob.
I lift him down and lay him in my doll's pram
where his putty-coloured beak
lolls sideways over the blankets. I know that later
they'll throw his pretty feathers on the fire.
My
mother's arms turn like a wheel over her head,
strong from beating batter with a wooden spoon,
cranking the clothes-wringer in the yard,
slashing crosses in the soda-bread.
Her arms backstroke her body out to sea.
I can see her white swim-cap bobbing like a buoy.
It's Mother's Day
she's rescuing herself this time.
©
Copyright Angela Patten 1999
PRAISE
FOR ANGELA PATTEN
"'Still Listening' has time in two places and words working double.
The "still" of the title means both quiet and continuance. Patten
takes such word play seriously. She uses oral Irish wit to her
written advantage,
simultaneously entertaining her reader with a game of words and
hearkening back to the island she left behind."
Samantha Hunt, Seven Days,
Burlington, VT, September 22, 1999.
"Patten
explores the disorientation of living an ocean away from her family
of origin. The sounds of language in America, even though the
words are English, are foreign. ....Like the tide, Patten goes
back over and over, pulled in her poetry to keep touching the
shore she left.... "Still Listening" is a double string of singing
poems. It gives off a most pleasing sound, the kind that deepens
with re-reading."
Francette Cerulli, The Times Argus,
Vermont, February 18, 2000
"Born
in Dublin, Patten emigrated to the United States in 1977 and now
lives in Vermont, where she received degrees from both the University
of Vermont and Vermont College. Her poems have been published
in literary journals around the world and she currently teaches
poetry. It is invariably the mark of a good storyteller that she
or he is first a good listener: Patten is definitely such a poet,
and her collection is aptly titled. Her ear records not only the
verbatim sense of her speakers, but the patterns, inflections,
and nuances of their speech as well. Her poems are, foremost,
narrative works in the melodic Irish oral tradition, works meant
to be listened to as well as read. They contain snippets of dialogue,
unbidden memories both clear and fuzzy, elements of history, and,
perhaps most importantly, family lore: those stories in a family's
tradition that have moved beyond literal veracity to a more deeply
rooted mythological truth, such as the story of how her father
lost his left eye. As is the case with many Irish expatriates,
Patten tries valiantly to reconcile the confining influences of
her Catholic working-class upbringing with her fondness for its
richness and familiarity. It is this tension which animates her
work. "You can't breathe for choking on the past,'' she complains.
Yet, moments later, she fondly relates a glimpse of her father
kneeling at a kitchen chair, "the black beads running through
his callused fingers like water over rocks.'' What a pleasure
it is to pick up a volume that one can enjoy thoroughly, from
the simple, evocative cover art to the last line of the final
poem."
Kirkus Review.
Copyright © 2000 Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
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(You can remove
it later if you change your mind!)
| Other
Salmon books by Angela Patten: |
 Reliquaries (Salmon Poetry, 2007) |
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