Review by Moira Richards
– One chapbook length poem. A song of legend and wit and word/sound play that draws the reader as the tides draw the sea to shore; as mythical Liban and her daughters draw their lovers to themselves. Fishwife tells the tale of the 300-year-young fish woman who, long, long ago, swims to the edge of land in search of a man to love.
From that cover of reeds, she took in
a bright tenor
in a fervor—a man who’d been a bard.
…
…her old words flowed—
an undercurrent
foamed over by his verse.
A daughter of their union is less enamoured with the stuff of love. She, instead, (shape)
shifted about, mated,
then hated that lover, that soul of a gallant man
wrapped up in a chitty slick dolphin;
And so, through the generations of now accursed women – until the narrator is born. Can she lift the maternal curse? Can she learn to be happy and to grow in love as did her very first foremother?
Fishwife by Jennifer Jean
Whale Sound Audio Chapbooks, 2011
Cover Art: Jinju Fong
Moira Richards, author, editor, publisher.