Review - Mom's Canoe

Mom’s CanoeBy Rebecca Foust
Texas Review Press
ISBN: 978-1-933896-27-4
$12.95

Few poets can capture the emotion, history and truth of rural life in the Midwest the way Rebecca Foust can. Her latest chapbook, Mom’s Canoe, stands as a testament to that.

Born in the city, but raised predominantly country, I connect personally with several of the poems in the twenty-four piece collection. Even though the rural landscapes we come from are different some similarities exist. Such as the hardships faced as evidenced in the poem, “Things Burn Down.”

. . . Papap hauled ashor laid brick; he was skilled with a trowelbut there was no work, understand? Don’t ask

what keeps a man from filling his flaskwith what he’d divined from the wells he’d drilledwith his own hands, or why Dad’s damask

was a gray square he hacked on to clear ashfrom his throat. Thick smoke from the papermillall day and night, understand? No one askedin those days if that shit could kill you . . .

I am also partial to the poem, “How The Fish Feels.”

hooked, jerked up from allit knew, fluid, muted milieubefore bright bite of metalMs. Foust draws on her family and childhood memories to fill the pages with words all of us can comprehend, whether we come from an urban or a rural background, with such poems as “Kinship Of Flesh.” A poem about reuniting with a forgotten family member.

Visits, letters, calls, e-mails
dwindleduntil it seemed we had lessin common than people I metin line at the post office.
It is no wonder Rebecca Foust has won the Robert Phillips poetry Chapbook Prize two years in a row.