Beth Ann Fennelly

Unmentionables

Poems

A new collection by a poet declared “one of the most exciting poets of her generation” (Harvard Review).

With elegant wordplay and her usual subversive wit, Beth Ann Fennelly explores the “unmentionable”—not only what is considered too bold but also what can’t be said because words are insufficient. In sections of short narratives, she questions our everyday human foibles. Three longer sequences display her admirable reach and fierce intelligence: One, “The Kudzu Chronicles,” is a rollicking piece about the transplanted weed. Another, “Bertha Morisot: Retrospective,” conjures up a complex life portrait of the French impressionist painter. The third presents fifteen dream songs that virtually out-Berryman Berryman.

from “First Warm Day in a College Town”

Today is the day the first bare-chested
runners appear, coursing down College Hill
as I drive to campus to teach, hard
not to stare ...

Beth Ann Fennelly is the author of Tender Hooks and Great with Child: Letters to a Young Mother. A professor of English at the University of Mississippi, Fennelly lives with her husband and children in Oxford, Mississippi.

April 2008 / hardcover / ISBN 978-0-393-06605-0
6 1/8" x 8 1/4" / 96 pages / Poetry