Hunger to Share

Hunger to Share might be called narrative poetry, but Bresnahan thinks and observes lyrically. She is full of a hungry love--for music, art, nature, and for disparate places and cultures (Woodworth). These arresting, compelling, and moving poems take us on journeys in Asian locales, in Appalachian landscapes, and in the arena of relationships (Barr). Bresnahan...takes the reader...on an unforgettable journey to destinations as placid as a Northern Wisconsin lake, to the complex panorama of present-day Southeast Asia, and to the interior realms of grief, courage, and love (Taylor).

Review :
Peg Bresnahan's poems are deft, accessible, and musical. They are also strange. They are strange the way this world is strange when we remember to look at it, in the way that characterizes the sublime rather than the beautiful, the final union with what was at first uncanny or disturbing. And they are most strange when they are most recognizable. Ranging from the back porch to the Mekong, the poems of Hunger to Share are full of moments in which the quotidian slides seamlessly into the startling. Through a hearing aid trapped in a hiking boot, we hear moles tunneling, and also the arguments and accommodations of long love. A rat's tail becomes a scythe to winnow the whole world. To the endless question of are you happy? these poems offer the only answer there is: "i will hold you / you hold me." --Catherine Carter, author of The Swamp Monster at Home Peg Bresnahan has an extraordinarily acute eye and writes with an exacto knife in language that is stringently clear and soars with enviable images that transcend the ordinary. These arresting, compelling, and moving poems take us on journeys in Asian locales, in Appalachian landscapes, and in the arena of relationships. Her disciplined words reflect the experience of terror and deep beauty. --Tina Barr, author of Green Target, winner of the Barrow Street Press Book Prize Hunger to Share might be called narrative poetry, but Bresnahan thinks and observes lyrically. She is full of a hungry love--for music, art, nature, and for disparate places and cultures. The last section, "Enormous Things," even transports the reader onto a pig barge on the Mekong. A journey with Peg Bresnahan is one to make us all give thanks to the gods. --Anne Harding Woodworth, author of The Eyes Have It One of the most memorable poems in Peg Bresnahan's new, well-crafted, and astonishingly varied collection is titled "Skin," in which the poet slyly conjures what it must be like to have "a cerebrum filled with hindsight / bursting to do it right--this time with style." This might serve as the perfect profile of Bresnahan herself as she takes the reader, both literally and emotionally, on an unforgettable journey to destinations as placid as a Northern Wisconsin lake, to the complex panorama of present-day Southeast Asia, and to the interior realms of grief, courage, and love. You'll find it a breathtaking trip. --Marilyn L. Taylor, former Wisconsin Poet Laureate and author of Going Wrong