ann tweedy

Review: Nature Store by Mary Kasimor

| Rebecca Valley

Nature Store by Mary Kasimor (dancing girl press & studio, 2017)

Reviewed by Ann Tweedy

Mary Kasimor is an experimental poet who has published numerous books and chapbooks and who, more recently, has begun to establish herself as a visual artist.  Now retired, she served for many years as a professor at a technical college in Minnesota.  She describes her art as being like her poetry in that it is “very experimental and abstract.”  She uses thread, ink and paint (watercolor or acrylic).  Her paintings, reminiscent of Rothko’s early work, have soft shapes connected by wavy lines which are set against a colorful background.  Her poetry is imagistic and non-linear and often explores gender and other social justice issues, along with her own experiences. 

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Local Forecast: The Body’s Alphabet by Ann Tweedy

| Rebecca Valley

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The Body’s Alphabet by Ann Tweedy (Headmistress Press, 2016)

Reviewed by Rebecca Valley

For more in our Local Forecast series on authors of the Pacific Northwest, click here.

Ann Tweedy’s collection The Body’s Alphabet is a book of in-betweens – in-between homes, in-between loves, in-between sexualities. It is a book about motherhood and memory, and the space we keep for our childhood long after we have grown up around it. Though Tweedy begins The Body’s Alphabet with the lines “I tread through / the world mindful that upsets / follow unguarded movement” (1), over the course of the collection she finds strength in those quiet and delicate moments, and in doing so steps out from her own carefully crafted betweenness to affirm her presence in the work. Continue reading →