Book Review | Toti O’Brien’s “Other Maidens”

(L-R) Cover of “Other Maidens”, Toti O’Brien

I opened Toti O’Brien’s book “Other Maidens” at random to the poem entitled Pachyderm – an utterly charming thought-provoking poem about a baby elephant.

By Lynne Jambor

That was enough to pique my interest and the necessity for a thorough investigation of “Other Maidens”.

The book categorizes her collection into sections called Child, House of Jaguars, Whore, Freedom, and Gibraltar.

From another section called Know This:

Souvenir

Rust me in iron and tan. Make me shadow
Drop me like an old scarf unfit for the season

From the section The Living and the Dead:

Cormorants

They have multiplied
Slick and shiny
They wear blackness as a new leather suit.

The final two sections are Mother Tongue, and Other Maidens:

Joan of Arc

And if myth is the thing you eat for breakfast
stale bread soaked in milk
plastic cup of faded green

Toti O’Brien’s words are wide ranging and deeply emotional: grief, wonder, fear, joy, estrangement, and intimacy. In “Other Maidens” Toti shows the world in a fresh light extolling beauty in the mundane, as well as the horrible or difficult. She is unafraid to speak of human interconnectedness moving from myth to truth and truth to myth. The poet’s strong spirit and clear vision shines throughout.

Toti’s is a compelling collection worth dipping into for years.

Lynne Jambor, a poet-artist living in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, participates virtually in many of Pasadena Poets on Site meetings. She is currently co-chair of the Haiku North America Virtual Conference, 2021.