Overview

In this collection, poet Scott Wiggerman does not write alone. He plays with two poetic forms-ghazals and golden shovels-that invite him to draw from the Emily Dickinson poems that speak to so many of us. The resulting poems end up far richer than simple reframings of Dickinson's work. Her words serve as inspiration, a beginning point for Wiggerman to create fresh works entirely his own-poems that can continue speaking to us today.

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9781956375466

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Reviews

""Beginning and Ending with Emily holds to very specific containers: the Arabic ghazal and Terrance Hayes' golden shovel form. Furthering his parameters, Scott Wiggerman uses an Emily Dickinson line as a start or close to each poem. The book feels like a treasure hunt-plunging from Dickinson's familiar lines into rhythms and questions edged by the chosen form. The poems are taut, personal investigations into new understandings of love. 'You can outline a shore, but perilous to map the soul, ' the author writes-and yet this collection bravely does just that."" -Lauren Camp, New Mexico Poet Laureate ""Scott Wiggerman's latest collection brings us the great sweep of questions which linger in our lives and in our bodies, questions which plumb the intimate and the spiritual, the mundane and the sublime."" -Brian Turner, author of Here, Bullet and The Goodbye World Poem ""Poet and artist Scott Wiggerman is known for his attraction to and use of restraints, formal connections of one thing to another. He is brilliant and evasive, playful and deeply engaged, and he teaches his fans-I am one of many-to appreciate and trust his work..... Wiggerman weaves the language of many into his own ingenious and beautiful lines. And he uses the forms with aplomb and genius. We need this book right now, for reference and delight. And to soothe our sore and broken selves."" -Hilda Raz, author of Letter from a Place I've Never Been: New and Collected Poems ""What is it not just to read a poet's work but to take them in so deeply that their being becomes a part of yours? Scott Wiggerman's Beginning and Ending with Emily is, by far, the best example I've found of such a deep and abiding study, making together with Emily Dickinson a great quilt crafted in the sleepless hours of the night. As such, each of his poems backstitches into hers, taking the scraps of the heart to form a book wild but ordered, held fast by the constraint for which she is known but following the pull of a queer golden thread luminous and striking. The result is not just conversation but co-creation, an achievement of measure, candor, and, above all, love."" -Nickole Brown, author of Donkey Elegies and To Those Who Were Our First Gods ""There's a wry self-awareness of [Wiggerman's] poetic constraints-as he says in ""Self-Portrait as Emily,"" ""I always have a line""-but the energy of this book burns in how his words push and pull against and through hers. This is a book about control and containment, but also warmth and desire and transformation. Implicit throughout is the sense that constraints may be useful, but they also have to be resisted, rearranged, or rejected, like the religious beliefs of one's parents or the shame of one's youth."" -Ed Madden, author of Prodigal: Variations

Author Information

Scott Wiggerman is a retired librarian and a late-life artist who coordinates the annual Poets Picnic in Albuquerque. His poetry focuses on many forms-not only ghazals and golden shovels, but also sonnets, haiku, and haibun. He teaches workshops on different poetic forms and is active in the literary community.

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