Marrying the Animals

Edward L. Edmonds is a professor of education at the University of
Prince Edward Island.

“What is faith, other than loving / those around me?” asks Cornelia
Hoogland; and it is upon such loving, in all its varying moods and
contexts, that her poems dwell. Sometimes there is a simple, plangent
tenderness, as in “What I mean is, I miss you”; at other times a
familial “matter of factness,” as in “Bread ’n Milk.” But the
dominant mood is one of upsurging intensity, finding perfect expression
in what might be called an antiphonal love duet between a fictionalized

Elizabeth Smart and the author herself. (Meaningfulness here is enhanced
by some background knowledge of Smart’s relationship with the poet
George Barker).

Hoogland’s imagery (how often does strength lie in the metaphor) is
forceful. She draws on all the senses, particularly the tactile, very
much in a D.H. Lawrence vein—“The cave of your crossed legs”;
“the body wants to stroke the mind”—and José Ventura’s
strikingly attractive cover art encapsulates this.