BOOK REVIEW:

Auguries & Divinations, by Heather Treseler

Bauhan Publishing
April, 2024
Reviewed by John Hodgen, Advisory Editor, New Letters

The best poetry book so far this year for me is the winner of the May Sarton New Hampshire Poetry Prize. Each and every poem is a winner. It’s a searing examination of a bright, forceful, talented and kind-hearted woman in this world, one who endures daily wracking pain with a courage that seems all too real.  As Michelle Boisseau once said, “We live in a country of flying monkeys now,” and this is the world Treseler moves through with infinite courage and grace. In one poem she writes of befriending Maxine Kumin and learning of her deep friendship with Anne Sexton shortly before Sexton’s suicide. Kumin describes that loss by saying “after such death there is no other,” and details finding the ashtray under Sexton’s sofa, the “red lipstick smudged on all the stubs,” and how the “grief-bird clawed at your eyes and chest until you wept yourself of salt and breath.” If you know pain each day you have to read this book.
 
Another gift for poetry lovers is George Bilgere’s decision to start a daily poem a day newsletter online called “Poetry Town” in which he offers a poem, beautifully accompanied by a painting or photo, and offers his reasons for suggesting it. It’s become a welcome daily stop. Go get it.