Date of Review:

Published Work:

But a Passage in Wilderness

Reviewer:

Ruth O’Callaghan

Source:

Poetry Review / Volume 98:3 /Autumn 2008

Review Excerpt:

"...It is this ability to perceive hope in despair, joy in grief - not in the abstract but in daily lives - which infuses these poems with a rare beauty. The recurring images - claws, bone, blindness, etc. - are not in themselves, beautiful. But, though both thoughts and lines are often broken, there is a cohesion of words, of landscape and of people which imbues Berdeshevsky's world with a particularity as unequivocal as that of Joyce's "Finnegan's Wake." ...Berdeshevsky is a contemporary poet reflecting contemporary life and one whose distinctive voice will impact as surely as "nailed nerves dry tears to the whites of seeing. ("Walking Papers"). "

[Poetry Review (UK)Volume 98, No 3, Autumn 2008]

Link to Full Review:

Ruth O’Callaghan on Margo Berdeshevsky, Elena Shvarts and Adrienne Rich