Uncommon Geography Small Press Review, July-August 2006
Therése Halscheid is an observer of nature, as perhaps many other poets are, but she moves beyond surfaces to explore cosmic things, considering, for example, the extinction of the sun. More often, though, she concerns herself with things such as “the promise of fireflies,” or a woman undressing in a forest. A stillness reigns in her poetry as truths reveal themselves in appreciation of the natural world. She is frequently employed as a house-sitter and, in this unhurried occupation, has the leisure to explore the phenomena of the world around her, and also within herself. And thus what is more appropriate than her poem “Andrew Wyeth”: A man painting the same farm, a single hill So many years, and still of the rugged truths which pause, open Solitary before nature’s elusive mysteries, the Halscheid persona draws us into the paradigm of meditation upon this ineluctable world. |