Kirjahaku

Paris Paint Box, New and Selected Poems, brings together over forty-five years of poetry by Helena Minton. The book opens with a sequence about the life and work of the French Impressionist painter, Berthe Morisot. Additional new poems focus on everyday moments, and meditations on the past. In selections from her previous work, poems touch on family, gardens, New England history and landscapes, and the Alaska wilderness. In a quiet but determined voice, the poet draws the reader into her world with direct, spare language and a keen eye to detail.

In simple, compressed language, and often stark images, Helena Minton meditates on the mysteries of every day: an early morning encounter with a neighbor; an attempt to identify a particular wind; an empty office, where "No one is walking in." The effect of "High Summer" on her skin is so fleeting that it feels like "a trick." After the death of her father, in an effort to find her place in her world, she travels to Paris, where she spent part of her early childhood, "speaking/this language I only half remember." In Florida, she is drawn to the anhinga, a bird that reveals "Grace in the awkward gesture." She has lived long enough to become one of the collectors "who can't focus enough/but can't begin to throw out." She is also a collector of words, like"adamantine," that "...shines in the centuries' dark." In her quest to hone in on definitions, states of being and essences, Helena Minton trains her eye on..."the scrutiny of the elusive."