The Migratory Moment

Migratory Moment by Marnie Holt Swenson is a hybrid book of poetry, dialogue, and paintings that examines an anguished speaker's view of her origins through memories.

Vernacular and fractured lines sift truth from fiction, creating a moving, erratic portrait of fragility and loss that spirals into "a puzzle I cannot solve." Whether the titular moment refers to the speaker's sense of time on earth, the desire for light from a destabilized world, or an implosion that results in being remade, this is a work of sustained, raw intensity. Survival becomes art.

The book navigates between the story of a woman who believes herself to have been an unwanted birth, "a thing of despair"; the confusion of family relationships; a father's suicide; and questions from a therapist. As the speaker confronts her own past, spiritual ambivalence and childhood scenes weave together in a dark pastiche.

A series of oil paintings reveal the story in an oblique way.

Karen Rigby, Foreword Reviews