My friend from college and former housemate M. Frost is possibly the most talented person I know. She is a veterinarian, a photographer, a science fiction writer, and a poet among other things. Finishing Line Press just released her first chapbook of poems Cow Poetry as part of the New Women’s Voices Series.
Forget the concept of the pastoral, idyllic images of cows ruminating, or the anthropomorphic ideal of cows. These are cows as they are, down to their sinew, amuck in their own manure (in one case dried amusingly in the shape of a map of America). These are not “pretty poems” yet medical terminology dances lyrically across the page. M. Frost finds inspiration in death and decay and the occupational hazards of anthrax as well as in Edgar Allen Poe and the Irish epic The Cattle Raid of Cooley. I wouldn’t call these morbid poems though. Undergirding them all is the constant effort to learn from life as well as hope and healing.
If this type of poetry appeals to you go and buy many, many copies of Cow Poetry.
Love them all!
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