Saturday Review: “Fruit of the Vine: Poems to Savor and Sustain,” a review by Michael Beadle of Claudia Emerson’s ungrafted (2024), in NCLR Online Spring 2026
“Emerson,” reviewer Michael Beadle says, “had a knack for illuminating and admiring the quirky and bizarre – a Main Street mannequin displayed above an auto repair shop, the reliquary-like exhibit featuring a lock of hair from Emily Dickinson, an ocularist who creates artificial eyes, and the curious sounds of a piano set on fire.” But Beadle has a knack too: his analysis looks far beyond the surface of the poetry. He comments on her syntax, the sensory experiences she creates, and the semantics she utilizes to craft her stories.
Obviously a long-time reader, Beadle’s review is thoughtful and pensive: “In a mere eight lines, a patient narrator imagines both a tranquil moment and an impending procedure that captures loss, transformation, mortality and vulnerability in the body of a butterfly, whose fleeting life may have reminded Emerson of her own impending death.” He is profoundly aware of Emerson’s untimely passing in 2014, and intersperses that awareness throughout his review.
In his last paragraph, Beadle highlights the crux of what ungrafted does: it reminds us of “our shared humanity” that we, too, enter blindly beautiful places where the imagination enters, that we, too, hesitate before the unknown mysteries of death and the paralyzing terrors of shame and guilt.”
Read Beadle’s review here and buy the collection at Bookshop.org (we are an affiliate and earn a small percentage for each sale).
