Comments on Bohince’s Work

In an overall summarized evaluation of Bohince’s work, I’d say the arrangement collection is successful if the content and chapter separations intentionally work to convey a struggle between feelings for the speaker’s father. I found part one of the book misleading in that it creates a negative story filled with bad memories (seen clearly on page 12) and underlying dislike and distress. The feelings held and displayed in part one are quickly combated in part two by a more sympathetic portrayal of emotions toward the father (page 35), a rendering that overflows partially into part three before original feelings are revived.

To justify my claims, I have attempted to recount my feelings and interpretations of the book in the following paragraphs.

Opening Poems:
The first poem is filled with religious tones and striking imagery. The title, “Prayer,” plays an interesting role for the opening poem of a book. It leaves one to question whether this opening prayer will serve as the commencement to a religious ceremony, a start to a series of testimonies on abandonment, or a prelude to a tragic story. The ending, “when no one else will speak to me,” infers a sense of desertion and loneliness. Such a gloomy opening for a book entitled, Incident at the Edge of Bayonet Woods, leads one to believe that the incident was not a happy one.
Aside from the inferences obtained in the opening poems, I found the abstraction of concrete images deceptive as well. In the first two poems, especially, several phrases seized my attention, a feeling I expected to see throughout the collection. Instances like, “a clot of feeling,” “I felt something then// in the approximate bones of a field mouse,” or “soil glittering with the misery of rain,” poetically combine concrete images with abstract emotions. A technique promptly abandoned after the second poem. This is not to say that imagery is not throughout the collection, because that would be a false statement (the collection is filled with vivid images), I just think this particular type of image ends abruptly.

Part I:
Part one gave scenes and snapshots of childhood images, memories, and feelings that worked to create a story; a story that generates a feeling of anger. In the chapter we get poem about the “Black Lamb” and the “Hide Out.” There is a seemingly clear negative relationship between father and speaker.

Part II:
Part two commences with similar yet noticeably different religious tones found in the opening poem of the book. In fact the first several poems in part two have religious inferences. It’s here that the book strays away from the topic and reverts back (after the religious poems p.35) to the relationship with a conspicuously atypical feeling. At this point, the father figure image plays a stronger role in influencing the emotions of the poem, rather than the negative memories introduced in part one. The poems on page 39-40 relate the sympathetic side of the speaker’s standpoint.

Part II:
For the most part, part three of the book continues displaying the sympathetic side, until about page 52, then the author writes, “His cruel creature, the lie of his beauty// beginning there in that element.” This is the part that aims to tie the first two parts together by showing the tension in feelings toward the father’s life. In some instances the speaker is cleaning a room trying to get a smell of her father, while in others she is attesting to the stressful life of being a woman (p.55). The book ends with the religious undertone that surfaces throughout and opens the book. The last poem entitled, “Charity,” is an appropriate conclusion, because the Bible notes (I Corinthians 13:13) that of faith, hope, and charity, the greatest is charity, and with the numerous biblical references it’s appropriate that charity ends all.