Karen DeGroot Carter Reviews THE FOUR FACES OF EVE, Poems by Boyle, Granville, Perkins and Waldstein

Details
Category: Books
Published: Thursday, 02 January 2025 23:09
Written by Super User
Hits: 36

Grit and Grace Fuel

The Four Faces of Eve

Anthology From Colorado-Based

Mad Women's Poetry Society

(Constance E. Boyle, Brooke Granville,

Petra Perkins, Gail Waldstein)

 

Review by Karen DeGroot Carter

Published in Hooked on Books, January 2, 2025

In their award-winning¹ poetry collection, The Four Faces of Eve, four Colorado poets — Constance E. Boyle, Petra Perkins, Brooke Granville, and Gail Waldstein, all in their 70s and 80s — pull no punches as they explore the myriad dimensions of their lives.

As members of their self-named Mad Women’s Poetry Society for many years, Boyle, Perkins, Granville, and Waldstein have mastered the art of supporting each other through the trials and tribulations they’ve faced not only as mature women but as writers plumbing the depths of their often-devastating life experiences in their very personal and powerful poetry.

Each of these poets is not only prolific but widely published, and their diverse personal and professional backgrounds contribute to the varied insights they provide. While painful universal themes such as abuse, betrayal, and loss are explored throughout the pages of The Four Faces of Eve, Boyle, Perkins, Granville and Waldstein offer unique takes and insights on those themes, making this multidimensional collection all the more compelling. And despite their despair at times, they also infuse many of their poems with the joy they’ve experienced as women in love, women as mothers, women as their own persons armed with what they need to not only survive in their lives but flourish as artists.

Often set in locales that resonate, from Puget Sound to Jones Beach, or in the homes of “Jersey Nana” or “Oklahoma Grandma” (Boyle 32), these poems are peppered with memorable images of larkspurs and cardinals; log cabins and pottery; familiar celestial objects as well as nature made celestial. Floating and even walking on water, flights and migrations, fears and refractions, regrets and remembrances are woven through The Four Faces of Eve alongside rings of truth as well as joy over what once was and wistfulness over what might have been.

Resilience, ownership, self-preservation, and pride also sit side by side with the unmentionables not only mentioned but declared for all to see and hear by Boyle, Perkins, Granville, and Waldstein. The power of desire and upending of ecstasy, selves lost in moments of joy as much as in moments of desperation and at times complete unmooring…all this is trumpeted unabashedly despite what “polite” society so often insists women — and especially women of a certain age — should keep to themselves.

Spirals and crashes; failings of the mind and body; ruminations on people and things cherished, lost, and now honored are interspersed with turns such as “hopelessness in hand” (Granville 17) and at times even edged with humor to brighten the unbearable…or celebrate the simplicities of a “ginger curl” (Waldstein 54) or the hope inherent in sustenance shared. Grief fades only to return throughout these reflections on everything from sexual abuse to spirituality—taking the breath away in some. At the end of “Retreating,” the response Perkins poses to the question “How can I believe / I alone am tormented?” (Perkins 96) strikes me as a helpful instant remedy whenever the world seems too much to take.

Through The Four Faces of Eve, Boyle, Perkins, Granville, and Waldstein not only document the seemingly unbearable affronts, injuries, and tragedies women still somehow bear and not only survive but share their life stories in ways that can help others who might see themselves reflected in these pages. At the same time, these four poets encourage others to not only survive whatever fate delivers to them — and from — but to create art along the way…for their own sake and for the sake of the art that helps sustain them.

1 The Four Faces of Eve was first runner-up for poetry in the 2024 William Faulkner — William Wisdom Creative Writing Competition sponsored annually by The Pirate’s Alley Society, Inc, a non-profit literary and educational organization based in New Orleans.