Response to Bohince

In reading Bohince's "Incident at the Edge of Bayonet Woods" in conjunction with Obedike's "Armor and Flesh," it was impossible for me not to develop an immediate bias on the success of the book, as Bohince so clearly has a greater grasp for not only language but also the mysterious and the enigmatic present within the image. In particular, I found the poem "Johnstown" put this on full display, when she movingly describes a rape victim, "left crumpled in a tree stand/wearing only a muzzle of ice, her mermaid hair frozen/ in wierd angles." The image is incredibly emotionally evocative, drenched in the dark and grotesque; I felt I was reading something out of a Grimm's fairy tale.

I agree with Camiele that this book is very sobering. I think this overall dark and twisted tone deals in direct connection with the themes that tie the book together: Bohince's relationship to her father and her reaction/reflection on his brutal murder (by someone she trusted and cared for), the speaker's doubt in God and the fruits of prayer, as well as the murder of innocence and the violence of the world (most noticably when she is talking about animals, ie. lamb, deer, the cardinal). There is a huge sense of desperation, of the world being cursed (whether we are speaking about Bohince's ancestor's of Bayonet Woods, the current inhabitants of Johnstown, the Easter Lamb). I would have to say, though, the curse falls mainly on the speaker's shoulders. In "Black Lamb," I feel it is the speaker, and not the actual lamb, who is "deep in troublesome clover,/alone, quaking beneath dwarf pines."

After several readings of many of these poems, it is difficult for me not to appreciate the complex mechanics working in this book to create a sense of completeness - the acrostic pieces, the Gospel conceit, the vivid descriptions of rural Pennsylvania, its poverty and tragic history, the speaker's clinging both to her father and to her ancestors, all of whom have shaped her to be "the curse" of what she is (though perhaps this is too negative a description). However, like Camiele, I had mixed feelings as far as the originality/beauty/success of individual pieces. While I certainly despised none of them (what a wonderful contrast to Obedike!), some of them lacked a specific energy that stayed with me after I had finished reading them. An example of this would be "Eating Fish in Pittsburgh," which I felt had more of an "over-dramatic" autobiographical feel to it, revealing details of the speaker's life without giving me much of a greater insight. Also, I was let down by the final piece, which seemed to me very much an "in conclusion" segment attempting to answer all of the reader's questions concerning early ambiguities/conflicts within the speaker. Bohince writes, "But what the Book/omits, what the song, is how He allotted/for each gift one brutality/for balance." While I think this is beautifully worded, it seems a panacea for the speaker's early interactions with God and prayer.

As a first book of poems, I feel the piece succeeded on a large level, at least, interesting me enough to look out for her future work. I feel she might have been feeling out a lot of things within her own work; but I feel many things here as part of a grand experiment, and certainly, a moving narrative.