Overview

The poems in Descent illuminate the lives of women (mythological, Biblical, historical, and modern) through traditional poetic forms, persona poems, and ekphrastic work. Whether reimagining the myth of Persephone and Demeter in the context of a modern mother-daughter relationship or giving voice to anonymous women portrayed in Impressionist paintings, these poems revise patriarchal stories from a decidedly feminist point of view. Woven throughout the collection are more personal poems connecting the poet's experience to that of the characters.

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9781646621439

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Reviews

As its title attests, the lucid secrecies that underlie Jennifer LeBlanc's Descent stem from the Eleusinian Mysteries, initiation rites enacting one of the earliest recorded vegetation myths. Everywhere in LeBlanc's finely etched poetry, the speakers feel the chill tug of the underworld, even as they respond to the cycle of the seasons and the metaphors for birth, death, and renewal that the turning earth provokes. Formally adroit (there's a sonnet crown, four variations on the ghazal, a pantoum, a sestina, and some intricate prosodic inventions of the poet's own), LeBlanc's symmetries honor recurrence. And yet, readers will find no irritable reaching after fact and reason from this poet, who states her manner and matter with disarming candor-- no need to be rational --as well as with a sly irony tinged with rue: Hades is clever. --Steven Cramer, author of Goodbye to the Orchard and Clangings In Jennifer LeBlanc's first full-length collection, imaginatively expansive poems adroitly balance on the cusp of the mythic and the real. Whether writing in forms such as ghazals and pantoums, or working through her material in ekphrastic poems or tightly woven couplets, LeBlanc approaches her subjects from the periphery with quiet intelligence and curiosity. I like to think God is a small young woman LeBlanc writes. In another poem she asserts Hades just needs someone to share hell with. LeBlanc's poems reveal a mind alert to the inequities of life, particularly for the many female figures who populate these pages, and the talent to express these challenges with utter and graceful control and span. --Julia Lisella, author of Love Song Hiroshima, Terrain and Always

Author Information

Jennifer LeBlanc earned an MFA in Creative Writing from Lesley University. Descent is her first full-length book, and individual poems have been published in journals such as The Adirondack Review, CAIRN, The Main Street Rag, and Melusine. Jennifer was nominated for a 2013 Pushcart Prize and works in the English Department at Tufts University.

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