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Guinevere in Baltimore
The winner of the eighth Anthony Hecht Poetry Prize is Shelley Puhak. Guinevere in Baltimore was chosen by the 2012 judge, Charles Simic, who will contribute a foreword to the collection when it is published by Waywiser in November 2013. This is the second collection for Ms Puhak, who is from Catonsville, Maryland.
- GenresPoetry
104 pages, Paperback
First published December 28, 2013
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
April 27, 2023
I won't pretend to be a poetry expert and maybe I can't even claim to be a novice. I remember what I learned in elementary school and can probably put together a pentameter. However, I am completely incapable of deconstructing how Shelley Puhak makes multiple stories, timelines, and characters converge in Guinevere in Baltimore. Ultimately, writing these seeming disparate things is not the proof of artistry. Anyone can just write weird, interconnected things (and I assure you I have tried). No, Puhak's art is that somehow things that don't go together make sense. These poems say a lot of things with vivid and sometimes visceral emotion. For me, if a poem can make you think and feel something, then it's art. And this book is art.
September 13, 2020
This had been sitting in my endless bookpiles since I started at Notre Dame University of Maryland. Had picked it up in the college bookstore, as it was a professor's collection of work. Had been slow to pick it up, mostly because I had heard so many good things about it. I enjoyed her captures of Baltimore, and airports but probably hadn't been as enchanted by the connection to the Arthur's tales as I wasn't as well versed on those. Read it in a morning.
August 11, 2021
This collection is wickedly funny. It’s written like a play, with poems in the voices of different characters who are all in conversation with one another. The former Poet Laureate Charles Simic wrote the forward for this book. I read reviews that described this book as brilliant and unique and I wasn’t sure if it would live up to the hype but it did. You don't need to know about Arthurian legend or the city of Baltimore to appreciate this collection, but if you are familiar with either, you will get an extra kick out of it.
October 9, 2021
Finally read this one by my college mentor. As always, I’m in awe of her talent. Her mark on my life has been indelible and I’m so glad I was able to learn from her. I loved this book and am excited to re-read it again and again to find more parts over which I can marvel.
February 22, 2019
“How we are never more alone
than in love.”
Funny, heart-breaking and magnificently written. Not just a modernization of Guinevere, Arthur and Lancelot but a reimagining. Loved it!
than in love.”
Funny, heart-breaking and magnificently written. Not just a modernization of Guinevere, Arthur and Lancelot but a reimagining. Loved it!
December 18, 2013
I'll admit I may be prejudiced because I know Shelley, but I really enjoyed reading this. You'll especially enjoy this if you know the Baltimore settings where she locates the story of the love story of Guinevere and Lancelot.
Here's my favorite Shelley Puhak poem:
The Lexington Market Fire
by SHELLEY PUHAK
Baltimore: March 25, 1949
Clutching handfuls of steel-
cut oatmeal to ash she waits, famished
in a single stall
when the ice dealers open it
she gulps air and dashes out,
overturning
tubs of daffodils, hyacinth, lilac,
tearing through aisles of victuals and viands,
long hem dripping flames
lobsters death-whistle, boiling in their tanks
while pulled-taffy droops liquid, fresh-flaked
coconut snaps,
goose skin puckers, crisps, and she licks drippings
off her lips. Outside, twenty-four engines, six
ambulances,
in the nearby hospital ready to evacuate:
new mothers ginger with fresh stitches and
leaking nipples
while she pops unshucked oysters, deep-fries fresh
muskrat, incinerates crabcakes and, with
their wax paper
melted in her teeth,
slurps up the juice at the bottom
of a smoking oak pickle barrel.
Here's my favorite Shelley Puhak poem:
The Lexington Market Fire
by SHELLEY PUHAK
Baltimore: March 25, 1949
Clutching handfuls of steel-
cut oatmeal to ash she waits, famished
in a single stall
when the ice dealers open it
she gulps air and dashes out,
overturning
tubs of daffodils, hyacinth, lilac,
tearing through aisles of victuals and viands,
long hem dripping flames
lobsters death-whistle, boiling in their tanks
while pulled-taffy droops liquid, fresh-flaked
coconut snaps,
goose skin puckers, crisps, and she licks drippings
off her lips. Outside, twenty-four engines, six
ambulances,
in the nearby hospital ready to evacuate:
new mothers ginger with fresh stitches and
leaking nipples
while she pops unshucked oysters, deep-fries fresh
muskrat, incinerates crabcakes and, with
their wax paper
melted in her teeth,
slurps up the juice at the bottom
of a smoking oak pickle barrel.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews