Saturday Review: “The I and the Eye: Seeing the Poetic in the Mundane” a review by David E. Poston forthcoming in NCLR Online Fall 2025 of Irene Blair Honeycutt’s Mountains of the Moon (2024) and Terri Kirby Erickson’s Night Talks (2023).
Poston states, “Both these collections from significant North Carolina poets invite us to take a long view of poetic careers.” These two award-winning poets give their readers an in-depth look at the rich heritage of North Carolina poetry.
Irene Blair Honeycutt has published four previous collections of poetry. Of her latest collection, Mountains of the Moon, Poston writes: “These poems have deep connections to literary tradition and the literary community, current and past, near and far, poets and writers whom she brought to Central Piedmont Community College or with whom she studied at Breadloaf or abroad.” Honeycutt’s scope of understanding on the subject of each poem is clear. Whomever she “addresses, whatever she observes, she establishes intimacy with subject and with reader, whether over tea with a friend or wine with Wang Wei.”
In the same way that Honeycutt has such strong connections to the literary world, Terri Kirby Erickson’s collection shows “a keen and always empathetic observer, but one who is unobtrusive, more often eye than I.” Erickson offers the reader an “easy and nostalgic warmth”, despite the darker tone that some of her poems take. “Here the characters themselves may not be as inviting,” Poston eludes, “but Erickson invites us to see what they carry emotionally before we dismiss or disregard them.”
Read the entire review here! And buy these books at independent bookstores or through Bookshop.org.
