Sky Girl

Rosemary Griggs

Sky Girl is a very difficult book. Not necessarily because of its subject matter (though the book's stated subject matter, the examination of the lives of stewardesses in a post-9/11 society, would probably be difficult for some people), but because of the way that subject matter is presented. Whether some of these poems are poetry at all would be subject to very vigorous debate, no doubt, especially the one-line, one-sentence "poems" which read more like things jotted on a notepad during a phone conversation.

"I saw her one time after that. I said that's a nice dress on you, your
arms don't look that fat in it."
(--"She's not pretty but she has an accent")

Yes, that's the whole thing.

So the difficulty comes in piecing all this together. Like a double-sided jigsaw puzzle that's nothing but one shade of blue, some of the pieces do fit together in obvious ways (the whole September 11 thing, for example), but others (like, for example, the piece above) don't seem to fit in with the overall picture, even when turned upside-down and rotated in every way possible. Eventually, you're probably going to give up and go onto another puzzle. (Just make sure it's not all one shade of, say, yellow.)

There are some good things here, but not enough to give it a recommendation.