Mary Angeline’s poems seem to be on their way from this world to some other, a dark and fascinating journey. They catch, by little more than a blur of motion, the body’s fall into spirit.
— Keith Waldrop
Mary Angeline
Praise for Precise Intrigues
Precise Intrigues has the rigorous murmur of a needle stitching a tapestry where each line adheres to a necessary trajectory, “seen at the moment as part of the vision.” Once again, we are reminded that language is the ordering structure of how we come to know, and that changing the order changes what we know. What comes to light is the possibility of further possibilities, as full of delight and mystery as any advent: “from the forest came taunting glimmering belly and sudden interest / as hammered english.”
— Ann Lauterbach
Vision—the ability to see but also to interpret thereby—and Providence—the ascription of beneficent meanings to what is seen. These are the two eyes out of which Mary Angeline looks in these brilliant, spare lyrics. If her vision is double, it is brought to a focus on the place (the city of Providence as a narrative of grace) where the utterly mundane ceases to be so.
— Michael Davidson
