Susan Briscoe: The Crow's Vow

My review of Susan Briscoe's "The Crow's Vow" is up at The Rover. 

A Decastitch in Time: The Crow’s Vow
The Crow’s Vow, by Susan Briscoe, Signal Editions, Véhicule Press

by Brian Campbell
16.08.2010

Susan Briscoe’s poetry is one of telling details, subtle hints and indications. The Crow’s Vow, her first collection, follows the slow breakup of a marriage as it is reflected in the passage of the seasons around the couple’s cabin in the woods. What most readers in our story-based culture would expect to make up the central plot – the scenes from the marriage – is reduced to a hazy, thinly evoked background, while what normally would comprise the background becomes the poet’s chief focus: the trees, the garden, the foxes and mice, and hints of happiness, resentment and tensions as projected by her states of mind. More →