BETWEEN TWO WORLDS
a tentative foot
hovering over each
a world of doctors, needles,
infusions and confusions
a world of wonder and poetry
and the promise of spring
until one world wanes
like a crescent moon
taking summer’s bounty
the other captures you—
a crab with ragged claws
____________
Claire Scott
Review by Keith Hansen
This is a gem of a piece, beautiful in both choice, and economy, of words. It says everything that needs to be said, then lets the reader fill in whatever they may need to for themselves.
Review by Zeke Sanchez
BETWEEN TWO WORLDS by Claire Scott is a minimalist poem with bright imagery. It does present the reader with a kind of koan, if it’s proper to use that analogy, in that the images in the first and second stanzas are of tentativeness and medical images and needles, yet the foot (in the poem) somehow hovers over both wonder and poetry. So apparently the tentativeness is not from fear but rather a decision between the wonder of the power of the medical world and the poetry of it? Eventually the poetry subsides and the ragged claws come for you. Claire Scott packs a lot into this poem.
Review by Massimo Fantuzzi
Blue pill, Red pill. In a time when polarization promises easy answers to a complex reality, when we seem unable to imagine a third option, let alone a fourth, one word in this either/or landscape caught my attention and reassured me: tentative. A word close to tentacle, sharing the same root. Are we still able to attempt, tempto in Latin, tentare in Italian? Do we still have the strength and imagination to let our ideas reach out and find their own path? Can we still play, or can we only be played?