Merrybegot

The odd language comes to us (we who have never lived there) as part of a complete way of life, as part of an ethos, like Synge’s Aran English, which Dalton’s language in Merrybegot can resemble.

on connotation : Stephen Burt : Harriet the Blog : The Poetry Foundation 2007

I loved Merrybegot, which I discovered while reading for Open Field and was happy to include her in that anthology, unknown to me or not.

Mary Dalton Lemon Hound 2007

In this collection Dalton moves away from the spare energy of the poems in Merrybegot to slightly more formal preoccupations, and to some degree, loses a bit of that original verbal energy.

Mary Dalton Lemon Hound 2007

I loved Merrybegot, which I discovered while reading for Open Field and was happy to include her in that anthology, unknown to me or not.

Archive 2007-11-01 Lemon Hound 2007

In this collection Dalton moves away from the spare energy of the poems in Merrybegot to slightly more formal preoccupations, and to some degree, loses a bit of that original verbal energy.

Archive 2007-11-01 Lemon Hound 2007

Yesterday I was teaching Merrybegot, a superb book of poems by the Newfoundland (Canada) poet Mary Dalton, who spun the whole, moving and memorable collection of lyric poems from the oral traditions of Newfoundland – from the sayings, folkways and words particular to that remote part of Atlantic Canada, and especially to the fishing villages (” outports”) and the older ways of life they have contained.

on connotation : Stephen Burt : Harriet the Blog : The Poetry Foundation 2007