00 ORANGES & SARDINES

MOM’S CANOE b y Rebecca Foust

Texas Review Press, 2008. 30 pages.

REVIEW BY MELISSA M C EWEN

Go ahead…aspire to transcend

your...roots.../escape the small-minded tyranny

of your small-minded Midwestern

coalmining town./But when you’ve left it behind you

may find it still there, in your dreams

your syntax, the smell of your hair...

— from “Altoona to Anywhere”

And in your poems!

In Rebecca Foust’s Mom’s Canoe, from the first poem to the last, the reader is

“back home” in the Allegheny Mountains of western Pennsylvania as if he were

born there, too, and going back home for a visit — that is how vivid Foust’s

poems are in this chapbook. Rebecca Foust was born in Altoona, Pennsylvania

and grew up in a small town made up of coal mines and farmland; she now lives

in Northern California, but it is as though she never left western Pennsylvania.

Sometimes one has to leave to appreciate “back home” and understand that

“back home” shapes you and makes you who you are and if you are a poet, it

will find its way into your poems, eventually, even if you “aspired to

transcend...[and] escape...[it].”

In Mom’s Canoe, Foust falls back comfortably into her native town, even

though, sometimes, times were hard. And she does not explain things that may

be unique to her town, as if you are an outsider, stopping over to pay her a visit,

instead she expects you to know; she is reliving with you, as if you were an

inhabitant. And after reading Mom’s Canoe, you will feel as if you were. You will

know of:

[the]...thick smoke from the papermill

all day and night...

— from “Things Burn Down”

...the men…[and how]/their coats

exhale wet wool and wood smoke,/their feet

beat a work boot tattoo; laid off,/laid off, laid off...

— from “Allegheny Mountain Bowl”

[the]...beer/served on an unfolded Altoona Mirror . Not damask...

— from “Things Burn Down”

[the]...cottage down in the Cove

—mildew and wild roses,

thick vines choking/everything...

— from “Once was a River”

“And if you understand, you won’t have to ask” about Mom’s canoe;

you’ll listen as if you’ve heard the story before, but not how Foust tells it, and

you’ll nod in remembrance:

Do you remember your old canoe?

Wooden wide-bellied, tapered ends

made to slip through tight river bends

swiftly, like shadow…/Remember how it glowed like honey in summer...

— from “Mom’s Canoe”

You’d go back to him...

your swaggering.../second husband.../How could you

after he blackened/your eye,

dumb-bitched you

and wrecked your canoe?

— from “Backwoods”

Overall, Rebecca Foust’s chapbook, from page one to page thirty, is

a strong compilation. The poems in here can hold their own in any literary

journal or anthology. Mom’s Canoe, to me, is the epitome of what a chapbook

should be.

MOM’S CANOE BY REBECCA FOUST

00 ORANGES & SARDINES