apmartinez's review against another edition
5.0
Stacey Waite’s “the lake has no saint” is an intimate, brutally honest, and poignant collection which explores identity and gender. The nature of her fragmented prose poems both jar the reader as well as spurn them on, pushing them to question what they know about the gender dichotomy and identity. In “when the chalk of androgyny”, Waite cries out in a voice representing her younger self questioning her body and how she feels in it.
my mother. somehow i knew she wasn’t bothered by the stick figure triangle
skirt that indicated the path we were to take, the ways we were to interpret our
bodies. but my mother and i do not have the same body. my mother does not
read the doors at all; she is automatic and in her automatic body. (12)
Her words, perhaps simplistic in nature, continue to dance on the tongue long after they are spoken due to the complexity and lyrical nature of her poetic construction and social relevance.
my mother. somehow i knew she wasn’t bothered by the stick figure triangle
skirt that indicated the path we were to take, the ways we were to interpret our
bodies. but my mother and i do not have the same body. my mother does not
read the doors at all; she is automatic and in her automatic body. (12)
Her words, perhaps simplistic in nature, continue to dance on the tongue long after they are spoken due to the complexity and lyrical nature of her poetic construction and social relevance.
More...