Gathering the Tribes (Yale Series of Younger Poets)

Rating:
Summary: Forché's first book lyrical but not self-involved
Review: Forché's first book, winner of the Yale Series of Younger Poets Prize, has an implicit politicism, with poems about the political intrusions (Terrence Des Pres' term) that led to her grandparents' disclocations from Czechoslovakia and Kiev, and her as-a-matter-of-course discovery of love between women in "Kalaloch." Most poems here tend towards the personal lyric, decidedly unsolipsistic. The poet Stanley Kunitz, judge of that year's Yale Younger Series prize, introduces the collection.

Rating:
Summary: Poetry of Displacement and Replacement
Review: Forche's winning collection for the Yale Series of Younger Poets is filled with language (sometimes emotive, sometimes deliberately stark) about the displacement of culture, love, and harmony coupled with a replacement of belief, identity, and beauty. The poems in the collection show Forche's skill in the early (not beginning) stages of her craft. Mourning and celebration of identity in "The Morning Baking" and "What It Cost" link Forche's history with the burden of passing on those oral records. "Burning the Tomato Worms," "This Is Their Fault," and "Taking Off My Clothes" demonstrate a confidence in sexuality also exhibited in such poets as Marge Piercy and Adrienne Rich. Even Forche's early lyricism in "Calling Down the Moose" and "Song Coming Toward Us" deserve attention. And no one can praise "Kalaloch" better than Poet Laureate Stanley Kunitz in the introduction to Forche's manuscript: "In its boldness and innocence and tender, sensuous delight it may very well prove to be the outstanding Sapphic poem of an era."