At Goat Hollow and Other Poems By Wilda Morris. Review by Carole Mertz

 

Cover of Wilda Morris' At Goat Hollow and Other Poems © Kelsay Books

This latest collection from Wilda Morris covers a lifetime. It lauds an important person in Morris’s life. It also gives glimpses into the life of the poet herself. Ms. Morris, her sister, and her mother resided, in a time past, in the same country house with Norman Weber and his wife  
Irene. Many of the poems address Norman or arrive in Norman’s voice. Morris presents the collection as a Memoriam to her cherished uncle and his wife.  

Morris wields a strong poetic hand. She offers poems in free verse, but also scribes in refreshing forms that intrigue the reader. Not many poets, these days, offer the bouts-sonnet form. We find this form in “At Uncle Norman’s,” its end-words matched to a sonnet by Milton. A pantoum opens the collection. Other poems include epigraphs from renowned writers or borrow opening lines from them. A “Spoon River Poem” also appears.
Especially informative is the poem “Norman Explains Himself after Reading an Encyclopedia Article about the Four Elements.” In “Air” the verse begins with “My life opens and shuts / like wings of a bird.” A line from “Earth” asks “Why work indoors in fall when earth / is a picnic blanket of bright colors…?” “Water” offers a sad line concerning Norman’s deceased nephew. From “Fire” we read “I am the fire of sun / and star, lover of daylight and night sky / and the kinetic energy of children.” It’s a marvel how Morris brings Norman’s personality forth into her pronounced and poetic daylight. (p. 75)
At the close of the collection, we feel we’ve lived a portion of a mid-westerner’s life, a very American life of the first half of the 20th C. It’s a special life rooted in the earth and the raising of vegetables and beloved goats, the careful care of children, the respect for elders, a very rural  style of country cooking, humor, and more.  We discover strong elements of Norman’s character in “Prehistory of Johnson County.” (p. 60)

The quartzite and granite on the railroad bed

were not part of the land’s story

before white folk settled the prairie, // 

the stones hauled in from elsewhere

for drainage and ballast

around the ties stitching

the long surgical cut

across Mother Nature’s belly. 

Uncle Norman taught us not to wound the world,

But to love and study it. 

In At Goat Hollow and Other Poems, it’s obvious poet Wilda Morris took Norman’s precious  words to heart. The charming volume is a near-cousin, in verse, to Laura Ingalls Wilder’s  writing. Without slipping into sentimentality, Morris honors her relative in a finely shaped and  memorable collection.

At Goat Hollow and Other Poems By Wilda Morris Kelsay Books, 2023 9781639803385 102 pages, $23.00

https://kelsaybooks.com/products/at-goat-hollow-and-other-poems

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About the Author: Wilda Morris is past president of both the Illinois State Poetry Society and  Poets and Patrons of Illinois. She chaired the Stevens Manuscript Competition for the National  Federation of State Poetry Societies and has led numerous poetry workshops for children and  adults in various States. She is the author of Szechwan Shrimp and Fortune Cookies (Rockford  Writers Guild Press, 2008), and Pequod Poems: Gamming with Moby-Dick (Kelsay Books,  2019). Her blogspot(/http://wildamorris.blogspot.com/) offers a monthly poetry challenge to  contestants.  

About the Reviewer: Reviews by Carole Mertz appear in Bangalore Review, CutBank, World Literature Today, ARC,  MER, and elsewhere. She is the author of the collection, Color and Line (Kelsay Books, 2021)  and the chapbook Toward a Peeping Sunrise (Prolific Press, 2019). Carole is Poetry Editor of  The Ocotillo Review. http://carolemertz.com/