Double Visions

Mary Ellen Miller was a poet and Associate Professor of English at Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green.

This collection is really two books in one: first collections for both poets. Thelma Poirier’s section, the first, is subtitled “Sunday Twice,” and Jean Hillabold’s is subtitled “Bloodlines.” There is an equal number of poems in the two sections. Very few poems are really dreadful; very few are really memorable.

Poirier’s “she gathers feathers” — affected punctuation like this is passé and meaningless — has some bright moments. The short lines, the assonance, and alliteration create a good musical effect, missing in many of her other poems.

“winter minor” is musical in both subject and technique. “reunion”, a long poem about growing up on the prairie, has a kind of power and eloquence but not very much. Still, the poems in this section seem to get better and better toward the end, and the last poem, “home free” (like all the poems, this one is about a woman’s experiences) is really quite well done. It’s a love poem with strong images: “rubber boots asleep like giant slugs,” and “your belted jeans /crumpled for a dwarf with wrinkled legs.”

Half of Hillabold’s poems are for her daughter “The Act of Birth” is somewhat original, and the one-line stanzas do convey a kind of excitement. Hillabold does not sustain a long poem as well as Poirier, but her short poems like “Pimples” are mildly amusing. “Baby Girl” isn’t bad.

There is passion and power in both voices — enough to make the collection defensible. One just can’t help but wish that some of the weaker poems had been weeded out.