|
Pelican Journal: Notes on Silence by Agnes McDonald Published by Liberty Quill Publications Co., Wilmington, N.C. 2007
If you want to experience the thinking and feeling process of a lyric poet in the romantic tradition, just immerse yourself in the stream of reflection that constitutes Pelican Journal, a short work by Wilmington poet Agnes McDonald. The book was self-published this Spring with the help of Liberty Quill Publications. Ms. McDonald, MFA, University of North Carolina—Wilmington, is prominent in the Wilmington area as a published poet and as a teacher of specially focused workshops on writing conducted at various locales in the region. This delightful, compact, leisurely reverie of an oceanside retreat is brisk, concentrated, inspiring. Much of its value, for me, resides in what can happen after you put the work down, upon imbibing it in just the few minutes that your first reading of it requires. For it doesn't end there. You may begin to wonder, what does the seashore say to me, in its minutest details and sensations? You more fully appreciate the universe in a nutshell, the "infinity in the palm of your hand" that intrigued William Blake. In Pelican Journal, we move from "I am encrusted with the barnacles of my own concerns," to "water, the color of pearls, sheen burred by the brief breaking of ripples edged with oyster gray foam.” We learn, finally, that our whole experience is a metaphor, a multifaceted one, and the silence we struggle to impose on ourselves in finding the words to express the protean forms of our perception is time well spent, over and over again.
Dr. Richard Trask is Professor of English Emeritus, from the University System of Maryland. He now resides at Southport, N.C.. |
|
Carolina Civic Voice Spring 2007 Vol. 7, No 1 |