Original Love

by Molly Peacock

Book Overview

Fiercely intimate in its honesty and fiercely formal in its measures, Molly Peacock's fourth collections shows the poet at the height of her powers. Using her trademark rhymes, characteristic humor, and daring sexual and psychological openness, Peacock intertwines at least four types of original love in her poems: a narrative of meeting again and marrying in midlife; the tangled knot of mother/daughter love; a quest for the spiritual; and, finally,...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0393314669
• ISBN13: 9780393314663
• Release Date: June 1996
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Length: 92 Pages
• Weight: 0.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 5.5" x 8.2"

Customer Reviews

Some soul whispers me a love poem in early evening.

It's a lovely and beautiful song. Shall I speak to you? Mind It's a secret! Next time......

Poems which are personal and universal at the same time

Original Love contains 91 pages of intensely personal and universal poems. The author divides these poems into three sections; First Love, Mother Love and Other Love. In 'So What If I'm In Love', a poem in the first section, I felt as if I were the one who accidently left "... the penguin sweatshirt ... smelled both of him and time ..." on the subway. I felt the pain of loss along with her as the subway doors closed and his scent went with it. Poems dealing with her mother's life and death comrpise the second section. In 'Raptor', Peacock accepts her mother's death on its own terms while imagining how her own death will happen. "Foolishly I'd imagined for you your mother's death, not your own ... who knows what death I'll get exactly, being daughterless, the line begetting neutralized, in hands beyond love". In the final section, poems like 'Simple' address her spiritual side; "When the wafer dissolves on my tongue I wonder what part of the Lord I have eaten," while 'Forgiveness' verbalizes finding peace with her past ..."the felt lightness of existence self-created, forgiveness". Something in each of these poems spoke to me as I were their narrator. I wish I had written them. I recommend this collection to anyone who wishes to dig into the heart and mind of a woman.