Kelli Russell Agodon, Small Knots — Reviewed by Sandy McKinney

Small Knots
By Kelli Russell Agodon
Cherry Grove Collections Paper
ISBN 1-9323-3927-2

ome of these poems suggest Karmic knots; others tangled relationships -- of people with each other, of people with themselves, of the raveling and unraveling of taboos down the generations. Most poignant are the taboos that have denied whole centuries of women the right to claim either a body or a self of her own:

From a right-in-your-face beginning in the first poem, "The History of _________"

There are certain facts we don't need to document . . .
Each mother existed without her body. The page of deaths
is full of question marks and when we know

what really happened, we leave that out too.
Anna Eliza, Sara Beth, Cora Lee, what where your stories?

Aunt Mattie's name is dishonestly quiet.
She didn't talk about it, and the book was shut.

Leaping with a signature honesty and courage into an expanded arena of topics, Agodon here follows her stellar work in a previous chapbook, Geography, winner of the 2003 Floating Bridge Press Poetry Chapbook Award. Many of the poems from that volume, a graphic catalogue of the emotional trauma of breast cancer, are included -- and appropriately so --in the last section of this collection.

Lest a reader conclude that Agodon only knows how to do compelling but grim reports of our tendency to deal with tragedy by denying it, her brighter side is revealed as humor in the mermaid who questions God. She "steals a Bible from the Seahorse Inn . . . will trust it only if it floats."

A gratifying surprise awaits us (from "How I Lost My Father's Suit") in such provocative line breaks as:

. . . the cafe where they served
minestrone soup, his favorite

daughter disappearing
into the parking lot,
the most beautiful

day in September,
. . .
a copy of the receipt for his eyes, blue
sky unable to compete with the shadows . . .

Showing a commendable maturity and having gained wide professional recognition for one still quite young, Agodon's work, as well as her life, offers an exciting promise for further development. We can expect from her even more change, experiment, and pioneer exploration into new frontiers for modern poetry. At www.agodon.com, her web page introduces a voice and a sensibility worth investigating.