O Lady, Speak Again by Dayna Patterson
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Dayna Patterson’s poems in O Lady, Speak Again form a chorus of voices brimming with female power. The collection is an evocation, of the lady ghosts of Shakespeare’s stories and all the women who ever were caught in their roles: mothers, daughters, witches, wives, mourners, queens, nymphs, corpses. They all sing words from Patterson’s own life, vulnerable and generously given. Exploring the tensions caught in the tangle of religion, longing, rage, vision, and ultimately healing, Patterson takes the stage with searing certainty, bringing her lines into conversation with Shakespeare’s to incant a protective spell over women everywhere.
View all my reviews