The Guardian's Poetry Book of the Month: Barbara Kingsolver's How to Fly

At The Guardian, Kate Kellaway selects Barbara Kingsolver's How to Fly: (In Ten Thousand Easy Lessons) (Faber & Faber) as poetry book of the month. "As a novelist, she is a smart craftswoman," writes Kellaway, "and here proves herself a committed miniaturist, innovative with the shape of poems, at home with a villanelle and with a particular flair for last lines that concisely turn the tables." More: 

Many of Kingsolver’s poems are written for, or about, other people – her husband, her family and friends (Walking Each Other Home gracefully explores the shared territory of a friendship). And what a friend she must be – and wry adviser. She launches her book with “how to” poems. Their light relief goes deep – they have a serious playfulness and are a reminder that poetry can help. In How to Drink Water When There Is Wine (never judge a poem by its title), sensible prohibitions are delightfully dismissed as “brick-shaped”. (In a later beguiling companion piece, Ghost Pipes, she reveals her own wild history). How to Be Married is, intriguingly, the weakest in the “how to” sequence. How to Get a Divorce has bittersweet stamina…

Continue reading at The Guardian.