Danielle Sellers‘ Bone Key Elegies is a collection of poems published by Main Street Rag Publishing as part of its Editor’s Select Poetry Series. Unlike eulogies that praise someone upon his or her death, elegies are a lament for the dead and are often mournful. In this vein, Sellers excels at creating memorable elegies for her sister, a lost family, and happier memories. However, many of these poems will deceive the reader at first, beginning with scenery or a happy moment in time before turning melancholy. Sellers’ style echoes the turn of line expected in haiku or the final couplet of Shakespearean sonnets.

However, some poems, like “The Bridge Fishers” (page 16), are less full of despair than the other beginning poems in the collection and more mischievous, especially as the narrator drives away in a boat beneath a bridge where fisherman are waiting for their first bite from the fish, only to have the engine of the boat scare the fish away. Sellers’ poems are filled with surprises: some shocking, some full of dark humor, and some violent. In “Welcome to my Father’s Showroom” (page 26), readers are given a quirky picture of the showroom as a sort of maze through which the father navigates or hides to peer at customers secretly, but in the final lines, ” . . . He watches them. In case one should step out of/line, a shotgun leans against the metal filing cabinet. On its shaft,/his hand-print is outlined in dust.”

Read the full review: http://savvyverseandwit.com/2011/04/bone-key-elegies-by-danielle-sellers.html ( )