
Review by Jami Macarty
Mary Newell’s ENTWINE is a reverent exploration of the “intermix of life” and “Verdant worlds” surrounding her home in the Hudson Highlands. Similar to Thoreau’s Walden, Newell’s collection is an “anthropocentric lament,” advocating for living deliberately and attentively within one’s environment.
With a lyrical and contemplative voice, Newell “summons” readers to wander through pollinator gardens and woodlands around her home. Weaving description and devotion, she aims to “tangle” the human experience with the lives of trees, plants, and animals so all are “respiring together.” Her “alert” poems “throb” with imagery that honors the relationships she forges with her natural neighbors: birch, salvia, red-tailed hawks, and ruby-throated hummingbirds.
Instead of making assumptions, Newell respectfully asks: “Totem oak, may I call you kin, care for your wounds?” Of course, the tree does not answer. But that is not the point. Much like a spiritual seeker conversing with the divine, the poet poses poignant questions about her connectedness to the world around her and accepts “adjacency, … / an honorable relation, no harm, some help.”
The collection’s use of “nuzzled wording” and hyphenated language effectively illustrates the concept of a shared “dwelling-spot.” The poet employs various forms to express her “lifepulse.” These include botanical acrostics, left-justified columns, and prose poems. Most of all, it is the lyric “Dispersals,” which scatters words across the pages like the flowers Newell describes, that enacts the wild, exuberant spirit of nature itself.
Ultimately, ENTWINE is a “heart proximal” almanac, celebrating the intertwined “luminous” existence of all life. Mary Newell’s writing embodies a desire for “one-to-one acknowledgment.” She invites readers to cultivate their own “tone-shape harmonies” with the environment and reflect on the marvel of coexistence: “Let rock be rock and water be water, / as each yields to the other.”
ENTWINE by Mary Newell. BlazeVOX [books], January 2025.
Reviewer bio: Jami Macarty is the author of The Long Now Conditions Permit, winner of the 2023 Test Site Poetry Series Prize (forthcoming University of Nevada Press), and The Minuses (Center for Literary Publishing, 2020), winner of the 2020 New Mexico/Arizona Book Award – Poetry Arizona. Jami’s four chapbooks include The Whole Catastrophe (Vallum Chapbook Series, 2024) and Mind of Spring (Vallum Chapbook Series, 2017), winner of the 2017 Vallum Chapbook Award. To learn more about Jami’s writing, editing, and teaching practices, visit her author website.