The New Pagans

Betsy Nuse, the former owner of Boudicca Books, is a Vancouver poet,
writer, and editor.

This is a substantial collection of verse in mostly shorter, free forms.
The poems are presented in four thematic sections: “Killing of the
Goat” and “Iron and Lace” grow out of Greek and Eastern European
settings, respectively; “Love on the Rocks” and “The New Pagans”
describe a variety of characters: strangers, family members, those close
to the speakers of the poems, as well as those she observes more
distantly. A concern addressed in the opening poem—that the messiness
of ordinary life can interfere, in the opinion of some, with the making
of art (“flagrant shifting lives” can “devastate our
art”)—recurs, but the book has the richness of a retrospective
selection or collection much more than focus on any single theme.

Keeney’s most successful poems, like “Kitchen-Sink Poem” and
“Threadbare,” are those sustaining or developing a single metaphor.
Other poems contain striking images (“Our words are doctors in white
coats”), but their lean language makes it difficult for the reader to
engage the writer’s imaginings and follow them through the poem.
Keeney is a keen observer and crafter of poems; the richer her language
and more intricately developed her ideas, the more powerful her work.