"Beth Twiddy makes her scientific love of distillation a truly poetic faculty by attending to nuances of feeling embedded in the selection of detail. Partly through her study of acting, she has become expert at anchoring the moment in physical context, in scene and in the body. Her emotional logic is especially haunting in her depiction of animals, as biological creatures and as totems of a neglected kinship between the human and the wild. Animals in her poems are numinous, as avatars of yearning and vulnerability, because her steady and precise attention persuades us that the poet's encounters are not mere literary constructions, but authentic moments in the peregrination of a soul alert to her world. Her wit is surprising and quirky, sometimes exclamatory, but strongest, maybe, in its undercurrent. Open to the surreal and absurd, to impressionistic nuance, image, and stark narrative representation, her poems are made with conspicuous care, craft, intelligence, and imagination. For me, her work is most impressive and most moving for the indispensable courage of her candor."
—Brooks Haxton |
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