Naming a Hurricane

Philip Larkin said that love is the rule of life, but that it's often proven negatively-we are as much shaped by love denied as love received. That double edge-dazzling human possibility, potential disappointment-is at the heart of Madeline Artenberg's powerful new book. A dried-out acorn becomes the token of lives "not fully lived." The unspoken nightmares of the Holocaust lie behind a father's punitive silence. A mother is "all kisses, all fists." Artenberg's feminist vision moves beyond the personal-we visit Greece and Guatemala-but the visceral figures of childhood return, humanized by time, "Now her eggshell hand tugs at my skirt." Monumental in its arc and canvas, Naming a Hurricane is the work of a lifetime. -D. Nurkse, author of A Country of Strangers

Madeline Artenberg's Naming a Hurricane, a terrific book of poetry, traces not only a life but the social changes impacting the speaker...from the innocence of pink pajamas to "hand-rolled joints," a woman's journey. Artenberg tells how packs of black dogs roam in Brooklyn as opposed to a kid and his dog she sees in the beloved movie theater, her escape. And even through glamorous travel, true escape is limited-as in "A Jew in Texas." This is where poetry comes in. Romance-young and older-and a keen eye for irony make Naming a Hurricane a wonderful debut! -Denise Duhamel, Guggenheim Fellow and author of Second Story