Peter Lattu

a review on Claiming the Spirit Within
edited by Marilyn Sewell

Claiming the Spirit Within: a Sourcebook of Women’s Poetry, edited by Marilyn Sewell, is a trove of contemporary poetry. Fossicking here will turn up gold and gems, Pulitzer winners and poets laureate. Marilyn Sewell parades forth some of the best: Sharon Olds, Lucille Clifton, Jane Kenyon, Erica Jong, Rita Dove, Denise Levertov, Anne Sexton, Jane Hirshfield, Molly Peacock, Mary Oliver, Maxine Kumin, Margaret Atwood, Nikki Giovanni, May Swenson, Louise Gluck, Linda Pastan, Muriel Rukeyser, and others.

There are some wonderful poems centered around cooking. Rhona McAdam, in “The Boston School of Cooking Cookbook” reflects on her mother’s cookbook, now in her own hands. McAdam sees the food stains, “the faded trail of silverfish”, the marginalia, and “a lifetime’s preparation vanished/ into our waiting mouths”. In “Retrospect in the Kitchen”, Maxine Kumin comes to grips with a death over a “boiling pot/ of cloves, cinnamon, sugar” and plums. Lin Max, in “The Piemaker”, hopes to have little girls in order to show them how it takes time “to get past wanting to quit” in order to make pies. Barbara Presnell learns about life and death with her mother, grandmother, aunt and herself while they all “snap heads from beans” and “unthread their sides” in “In the Kitchen We String Beans”. The kitchen is a great place to learn life’s lessons.

Some of Jane Kenyon’s best are here: “Yard Sale” reflects on generations as the “family’s belongings lie on the lawn”. “Trouble with Math in a One-Room Country School” shows how punishment can harden a heart against authority and change a child’s life in an instant. “Back from the City” charts a trip to New York City with its art and fine food that results in a startling epiphany about homelessness.

Laura Apol notes in “Woman of Light” that “lost poems are poems lost forever”. Marilyn Sewell’s collection brings us wonderful poems so that they are not lost but are here before us ready to read.

{Review by Peter Lattu}