Not Time To Wake Up Yet
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davidkmTentchoff, Marcie Lynn, 2007, Sometimes While Dreaming: Cedar Rapids, IA, Sam's Dot Publishing, 83 p.
Sometimes While Dreaming is a chapbook of poetry written by Marcie Lynn Tentchoff. Thirty-seven of the 48 poems in this collection are new. Eight ethereal illustrations by Marge B. Simon accompany them. At her best, Tentchoff is able to put the reader in touch with the souls of some pretty strange people and other beings. There is plenty of her best in this chapbook.
One of my favorites is "Fallen," in which a case of mistaken identity has more than casual significance.
Some other girl found him there,
And drew him down to her,
Gently freeing each limb from the thorns.
It wasn't me.
What I like best about this poem is that I was led to empathize with the protagonist (someone I could be, aside from the gender difference), but put in a situation I could never be in, and, while reading the poem, I felt that I was there.
I also enjoyed "Crow counting," with its mounting sense of impending doom for the naïve narrator.
The road grew long, I asked his name,
but he would only smile at me,
and stroke my cheek with feathers gleaned
from one of our last seven birds.
This poem has roots in the old ballads of betrayal and death that were so popular with folksingers of the 1960s and earlier.
From "Displaced":
Sometimes she remembers
coming from some other place
where song and dance
were food and drink
This poem is a short poignant view into the heart of someone lost who is forgetting that she is lost. Subtle stories, sketched in allusion, hints, and sly clues, these are Tentchoff''s hallmarks. One is sometimes left knowing the feel of what has happened, or why, when the specifics are uncertain.
"Other hungers" is another take on the Persephone myth, supposing, as others have done, that she's content or happy underground.
Do you miss the dim,
bone-filled freedoms
of the underworld
And what if she does? Would anything change? Tentchoff asks a lot of questions here and she hints at the answers, we are not sure perhaps if we interpret those hints correctly.
In other poems we explore the lives of werewolves, Cinderella, dryads, and others. In "Rootbound" (Clever title, by the way) a dryad shows us what her life is really like:
Away from this, the prison of my bark,
My anguish flows and rages through my sap,
And burns the brightest sun to bitter dark,
That they stride free while I rot in this trap.
Tentchoff reminds us that we are all prisoners, and I don't think she says this anywhere in Sometimes while dreaming, but it's implicit. Some prisons we cannot escape, but for many of us the bars are inside our heads.
When Tentchoff is dreaming, strange and wonderful things result. Myths are retold in enchanting and unexpected ways and new myths are created with their own history stretching out from them into the imagined past. Sometimes while dreaming contains many more poems I am tempted to excerpt for you, but come on. Just buy the book. I'm very sure you won't regret it.
Sometimes While Dreaming is a chapbook of poetry written by Marcie Lynn Tentchoff. Thirty-seven of the 48 poems in this collection are new. Eight ethereal illustrations by Marge B. Simon accompany them. At her best, Tentchoff is able to put the reader in touch with the souls of some pretty strange people and other beings. There is plenty of her best in this chapbook.
One of my favorites is "Fallen," in which a case of mistaken identity has more than casual significance.
Some other girl found him there,
And drew him down to her,
Gently freeing each limb from the thorns.
It wasn't me.
What I like best about this poem is that I was led to empathize with the protagonist (someone I could be, aside from the gender difference), but put in a situation I could never be in, and, while reading the poem, I felt that I was there.
I also enjoyed "Crow counting," with its mounting sense of impending doom for the naïve narrator.
The road grew long, I asked his name,
but he would only smile at me,
and stroke my cheek with feathers gleaned
from one of our last seven birds.
This poem has roots in the old ballads of betrayal and death that were so popular with folksingers of the 1960s and earlier.
From "Displaced":
Sometimes she remembers
coming from some other place
where song and dance
were food and drink
This poem is a short poignant view into the heart of someone lost who is forgetting that she is lost. Subtle stories, sketched in allusion, hints, and sly clues, these are Tentchoff''s hallmarks. One is sometimes left knowing the feel of what has happened, or why, when the specifics are uncertain.
"Other hungers" is another take on the Persephone myth, supposing, as others have done, that she's content or happy underground.
Do you miss the dim,
bone-filled freedoms
of the underworld
And what if she does? Would anything change? Tentchoff asks a lot of questions here and she hints at the answers, we are not sure perhaps if we interpret those hints correctly.
In other poems we explore the lives of werewolves, Cinderella, dryads, and others. In "Rootbound" (Clever title, by the way) a dryad shows us what her life is really like:
Away from this, the prison of my bark,
My anguish flows and rages through my sap,
And burns the brightest sun to bitter dark,
That they stride free while I rot in this trap.
Tentchoff reminds us that we are all prisoners, and I don't think she says this anywhere in Sometimes while dreaming, but it's implicit. Some prisons we cannot escape, but for many of us the bars are inside our heads.
When Tentchoff is dreaming, strange and wonderful things result. Myths are retold in enchanting and unexpected ways and new myths are created with their own history stretching out from them into the imagined past. Sometimes while dreaming contains many more poems I am tempted to excerpt for you, but come on. Just buy the book. I'm very sure you won't regret it.
