The Shape of Wind on Water: New and Selected Poems
Contributed by Ann Fox Chandonnet
For three decades Ann Fox Chandonnet was one of the most active, widely read and highly regarded journalists in Alaska. She turned out poetry books, cookbooks, a tourist guide, a history of Eklutna Village, and food histories from her Alaska homes in Kodiak, Juneau and Chugiak. Thousands of Alaskans read her features week after week in the “Anchorage Times.”
The Shape of Wind on the Water : New and Selected Poems ( Loom Press, 2023) is a generous, career spanning, collection of Chardonnet’s poetry. While settings of the poems range from New England to Maui, poems from her thirty-four years in Alaska are at the heart of the book.
Chandonnet recalls experiences from Sitka to Barrow (Utqiagvik). “Iris at Last” is my favorite amongst the fifty-one new poems gathered here. The poem, written for Shem Pete, the deceased (1989) esteemed Denaina Athabascan culture bearer, is insightful and beautifully done.
The section of selected poems includes offerings from six long out-of-print poetry books and an essay. I most welcome the inclusion of ten poems from Ptarmigan Valley : Poems of Alaska ( 1980) since the copy of this erstwhile collection that I purchased at the Book Cache more than forty years ago is falling apart. Two poems about her father “Snow Water Under Culverts” and “Peavey: A Letter,“ both rising from Dracut, Massachusetts childhood memories, are particularly affecting. In these and other poems from her perspective as a mother, daughter, wife, and community member, Chandonnet’s clear, well-chosen images allow these poems to resonate. ” September 15, 12:04 p.m. (Chugiak)” made me smile with her observations at the community post office.
The Shape of Wind on the Water : New and Selected Poems is filled with accessible, clearly written poems. This is a book many Alaskans, even those who do not consider themselves regular poetry readers, will enjoy.