The Dark Honey: New & Used Poems
by Ellie Schoenfeld
In Ellie Schoenfeld’s poems, one finds a tenderness mixed with bewilderment, a feeling of awe at the great mystery of life, and a longing. She says, “I want death to be like England / you go there for awhile / but then you come back.” There is in the poems a deep affection for the earth, and this earthly life, which she expresses with lyricism and wit.
— Louis Jenkins, author of North of the Cities and European Shoes
If a voice of warm dry humor is possible in the chilly Midwest, it is in this collection. The Dark Honey sits quite well, thank you, amongst the great literary achievements of the North Coast, indeed, the headwaters of the Mississippi. Schoenfeld rocks with the best of them!
— Denise Sweet, author of Know By Heart and Songs for Discharming
Wisconsin Poet Laureate, 2004-2008
Ellie Schoenfeld's poetry acts as a charm against complacency. In The Dark Honey, desire always trumps satiation. The horizon, with its promising light and suggestive outlines, keeps calling the poet forward. Yet even before the "secret possible futures" arrive, the pilgrim in these poems is anticipating "the long quiet ahead." An elegiac quality therefore colors these pages, giving them a double poignancy of desire and loss. When tulip bulbs "whisper their voluptuous ideas" to Schoenfeld, we're persuaded, too, given the voluptuousness of her work itself, which is the kind that could bring back to poetry those who've given up on it.
— Philip Dacey, author of Vertebrae Rosaries
$14.95
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Read a review by poet Connie Wanek on MNartists.org. Listen to Garrison Keillor reading "Patriotism" from The Dark Honey on "The Writer's Almanac" for August 5, 2009. |
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Awards
The Dark Honey: New & Used Poems by Ellie Schoenfeld won in the category of Poetry at the 22nd annual Northeastern Minnesota Book Awards on Sunday, May 16, 2010, on the campus of the University of Minnesota Duluth.