The Frog in the Lake

Bridget Talone

'At times her language seems to come from nowhere, and to open up a door there,” Talone writes, an observation as true of her writing in The Frog in the Lake as of her child’s. These poems are, above all, effervescent visions of the mother-childhead, which wears a “witch’s hat”—an eidolon of her cosmology-- and travels its “upward curl” to the loving apex of imagination where the realms of motherhood and childhood unite, in poetic power. This power, uniquely her own, show us how generously precise and plush and expansive the truth dreamt in awe is. I have drunk and leaned and laughed from the balconies of these curls with this poet, have chugged the golden soda and wept and burped gratefully at how deeply I needed this vision myself, and then watched my tears rise in the exquizz fizz of Bridget Talone’s heart.' – Farnoosh Fathi