A Review of Vivian Shipley's Hardboot (Louisiana Literature Press, 2005)

No matter how nimble with words and verse, no matter how far traveled in life and imagination, Vivian Shipley will always carry with her the rich and clinging heritage of her childhood home and family in Kentucky. Poems are permeated with the history of her Grandmother and Grandfather Todd, her parents, her husband, and her children. Thank goodness for lovers of poetry that same Kentucky earthiness tracks itself like red clay into the Manuscript Vault at the Yale University Elizabethan Club, walks Water Street outside the Stonington home of James Merrill, graces a barstool at Rudy’s in New Haven and stands at the bedside of Leo Connellan at Bachus Hospital, Norwich, Connecticut. Thank goodness, because this latest collection of poems by Shipley, prize winning poet and the author of eleven books of poetry, is a delight and leaves few subjects, diverse as Paula Hitler and the goddess Diana, unconsidered in her extraordinary observations of both the cosmic and mundane.

Shipley glides through a wide variety of roles: Victorian Literature scholar from Vanderbilt, homecoming queen of the University of Kentucky, divorced mother of rebellious children, loving daughter to ailing parents, fisherwoman, gardener, cook and lover.  Poems in Hardboot have more of an edge, are a little harsher than many of Shipley’s previous poems and often love is seen as a trap rather than a sustaining, nurturing emotion. In Unnatural, she chronicles the pain of her husband, Ed: “Stepfather was the salt he rubbed into your skin everyday. /He spit on your face, you learned how unnatural this son, / love could be.” In Loon, another poem about her sons, Shipley reveals:

Shipley also offers insight into the mother who formed her personality and caused her to strive, to achieve to reach out in expression through her poetry. In Alice Lee Todd through the Looking Glass, she writes about her dying mother:

From the poem With My Grandfather Todd the Summer I Turned Sixteen, we learn the hard and simple wisdom of farm life and of a grandfather’s desire to toughen a girl for the outside world:

If memories of life and lessons from the farm are sharp and poignant, they are also beautiful in their austerity and vivid like the cover photo of the Shipley barn in Howe County, Kentucky by Todd Jokl.  The fence is not any more restrictive than practical, the rust on the barn, not neglect but the relentless and inevitable march of time. Hurray that more than struggle and adversity clung to Shipley from her Kentucky roots. Self effacing in the Shakespearian Manuscript vault of the Elizabethan Club at Yale University, preparing to read to her audience, she says:

In Hardboot, Shipley’s subjects are ambitious and she takes chances with controversial subjects, as in the series of poems attributed to Paula Hitler where Shipley asks us to look at the life of a person in extraordinary circumstances, but still a person none-the-less, not a footnote, not a cartoon celebrity.  Hitler’s sister asks: “Does forgiveness come, in the telling of a story?  If so, let me tell you mine.”

In Father Gustaf, Giving Last Rites to Paula Hitler, referring to her infamous brother Adolf, the priest describes her headstone:

Other poems on subjects not drawn from Shipley’s own life are peppered with humor and satire.  The series, Metamorphoses, retells mythological classics.  In Revising the Canon: A Stag Party, there is a dramatic role reversal:

In Brueghel’s Icarus: An Old Husband’s Tale, again sexual roles are reversed:

No where is Shipley’s sense of humor more feminist, tickling and wonderfully tongue in cheek-ish, than in the series of prose poems: Woman’s Guide to Salt Water Fishing. To catch a sailfish, she advises, “Hold out for that spear, tail and pecs. Here’s a final word of warning: a sailfish can do strange things to otherwise normal women once he is hooked.”About the barracuda, she observes: “Of course, he’s a killer but so is every other male that swims. A barracuda is only more efficient.” In What To Do About Sharks, we learn how handle sharks at poetry readings:

Infused with wit and honest to the core, poems in Hardboot have a great range of style, tone and subjects. Throughout the collection, she demonstrates that in spite of having to leave her native state for Connecticut, Shipley is still a hardboot, a name given to Kentuckians on race tracks all over the country which implies toughness, stubbornness and a certain thickness of hide. Like a good pair of old workboots, hardboots can hold up to whatever nature or life throws at them. In spite of many poems that present adversity, Shipley’s poems lift the spirit, teaching it to endure by sharing both joy and pain. 

*Tony Fusco has a Masters Degree in Creative Writing from Southern Connecticut State University. He is the 2005 editor The Connecticut River Review the journal of the Connecticut Poetry Society, and Caduceus, the poetry anthology of the Yale Medical Group Art Place. He has been editor of the Southern News and the poetry anthologies High Tide and Sounds and Waves of West Haven. His work has or will soon appear in: the Connecticut Review, Louisiana Literature, the Red Rock Review, The South Carolina Review, The Paterson Review, Freshwater Review, Folio, Elm, Long River Run, Twilight's Ending, Laurels, Beanfeast, Vintage, Chiron, Lips and the Orphic Lute. His book Jessie's Garden published by Negative Capability Press in 2004 has been nominated for the Connecticut Center for the Book's book award. His poetry has won prizes in several contests including: The Sunken Garden Poetry Prize, The Alan Ginsberg Poetry Contest, The Eve Cummings Poetry Prize, The Leslie Leeds Contest, The Southern Connecticut Graduate Poetry Contest. He is a member of the Connecticut Poetry Society, the New England Poetry Club and the Elm Writers group. He has served on several panels, as contest judge and on workshops at various writer's conferences. Tony produces West Shore Poets a television poetry series at CTV, works for the Yale Medical Group and lives in West Haven, CT.