I Became a Voyeur in the Gallery of Unrecoverable Objects
The Veronica Maneuver Review - Michael Allyn Wells
Book by Jennifer Moore
Akron Poetry Series – The University of Akron Press ©2015
62 Pages.
There exists in The Veronica Maneuver a casual sort of chaos that flows from the page. Ordinary is transformed into extraordinary and Jennifer Moore delights me with her slight of thought. The kind of things magicians do, only with the slight of hand.
The narrator sent her, “blues away, they came back not as single spies but full battalions of redcoats, greenhorns, and yellow jackets. Her words shapeshift at will.
I became a voyeur in her Gallery of Unrecoverable Objects. If it is novelty you are looking for, you will find it in the “Great Hall of the Historical Poems.” It is here I find a woman’s voice that resonates as might St. Veronica as she approaches Christ on his way to Calvary. Here take my vail and wipe your face. In Saint Veronica Has Something to Say (II) you softly hear her, “come close—” There is always something to say. The jaw has learned the art of ventriloquism. It speaks through the hurt it feels.
What is here is likely only because it seems most unlikely that the Veronica Maneuver will ensnare the bull. But with her vail she is the matador unfurling the image left by Christ’s face, and the bull fails. Maybe it is distraction, but isn’t that what magic is?
Jennifer Moors’ voice is lyrical and at times moves in and out of either side of melancholy but what I found delightful; it teeters on abstraction. I tend to like in poems and there is just enough of it here. This collection makes me wonder, makes me laugh, and touches me gently as if to intentionally do no harm, even in grief.
Honestly, she grabbed my attention at the opening line, “In the year of our Lord the Electric Chair,” a poem wrought with brilliant wit and I was unable to recover it till I was finished with the last poem.
July 2019
Book by Jennifer Moore
Akron Poetry Series – The University of Akron Press ©2015
62 Pages.
There exists in The Veronica Maneuver a casual sort of chaos that flows from the page. Ordinary is transformed into extraordinary and Jennifer Moore delights me with her slight of thought. The kind of things magicians do, only with the slight of hand.
The narrator sent her, “blues away, they came back not as single spies but full battalions of redcoats, greenhorns, and yellow jackets. Her words shapeshift at will.
I became a voyeur in her Gallery of Unrecoverable Objects. If it is novelty you are looking for, you will find it in the “Great Hall of the Historical Poems.” It is here I find a woman’s voice that resonates as might St. Veronica as she approaches Christ on his way to Calvary. Here take my vail and wipe your face. In Saint Veronica Has Something to Say (II) you softly hear her, “come close—” There is always something to say. The jaw has learned the art of ventriloquism. It speaks through the hurt it feels.
What is here is likely only because it seems most unlikely that the Veronica Maneuver will ensnare the bull. But with her vail she is the matador unfurling the image left by Christ’s face, and the bull fails. Maybe it is distraction, but isn’t that what magic is?
Jennifer Moors’ voice is lyrical and at times moves in and out of either side of melancholy but what I found delightful; it teeters on abstraction. I tend to like in poems and there is just enough of it here. This collection makes me wonder, makes me laugh, and touches me gently as if to intentionally do no harm, even in grief.
Honestly, she grabbed my attention at the opening line, “In the year of our Lord the Electric Chair,” a poem wrought with brilliant wit and I was unable to recover it till I was finished with the last poem.
July 2019
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