The Terrible Wife

The Terrible Wife, in this new collection of poems by Terry Ann Thaxton, has married four times and imagined marriages to a soap opera star, her brother-in-law, and any man who will give her a ride because she “wanted to be / part of a wall of women dancing / water falling from the sky or a fountain.” Taking cues from her own mother – who is, to this troubled soul – “an argument against becoming a wife” – she sets out to find meaning: “We march out into the trees / or fly off our balconies looking for a man, / any man.” But still she judges herself through the lens of the men she clings to for comfort like “a woodpecker ... clings to [a] hollow / tree.” Thaxton does not find easy solace for her terrible wife, but instead lets her confusion and weaknesses clink and jangle like wind chimes in an approaching storm. This broken resonance with its disarming images and unpredictable movements is given to us in a voice devoid of self-consciousness and posturing. Thaxton’s poems are as compelling as a lifetime of snapshots spilled on the floor, discovered in a box that, moments ago, one didn’t know existed.