Home
Woods Wolf Girl
Woods Wolf Girl
Cornelia Hoogland; $17 paper 978-1-894987-53-0, 96 pp., Wolsak and Wynn
Poet and dramatist Cornelia Hoogland is an expert at spinning fables, and nowhere is this more evident than in the earthy sexual tension exploding between a B.C. Wolf and a girl named Red. In a series of monologues, or victim reports, readers experience the rumbling, boiling interior of a teenage girl named Red who just needed one instinctual meeting on a crossroads in the woods to have her concealed interior explode through. In Woods Wolf Girl, we meet the Woodsman, a Cardinal Richelieu-type witch hunter, who pursues Red simply to point out her original sin. In contrast to the Woodsman, we meet the natural World, Wolf.
Wolf acts as the catalyst for Red's innate desires: "he shows her/ sapphire, the sky in fall/ when yellow poplars clap so loud/ you just have to look up./ Yes, she says,/ yes"; (16). For the first time in her life, the woods is released, and "it was [Red] doing the inviting"; (19).
Hoogland's lyrical narrative draws the reader through the meandering pathways of the woods, our natural, shared, feminist mythology of 'Red Riding Hood', and enables us to feel the cemented girl breaking through her social bars and becoming the food of the forest: "her mouth ripe as the berry bush"; (52).
This is an exceptional retelling of an age-old fable. Why do we repress our innate, natural selves? To what purpose, and for whom? As Red experiences a coming of age, realizing, "how [her] body has always wanted to be a basket of gifts,"; (27), readers will recognize this girl's future perception of the aging Wolf (and World) as just a man, "hoping to fluff up his hair"; (83).
-- by Kara A. Smith
Cornelia Hoogland; $17 paper 978-1-894987-53-0, 96 pp., Wolsak and Wynn
Poet and dramatist Cornelia Hoogland is an expert at spinning fables, and nowhere is this more evident than in the earthy sexual tension exploding between a B.C. Wolf and a girl named Red. In a series of monologues, or victim reports, readers experience the rumbling, boiling interior of a teenage girl named Red who just needed one instinctual meeting on a crossroads in the woods to have her concealed interior explode through. In Woods Wolf Girl, we meet the Woodsman, a Cardinal Richelieu-type witch hunter, who pursues Red simply to point out her original sin. In contrast to the Woodsman, we meet the natural World, Wolf.
Wolf acts as the catalyst for Red's innate desires: "he shows her/ sapphire, the sky in fall/ when yellow poplars clap so loud/ you just have to look up./ Yes, she says,/ yes"; (16). For the first time in her life, the woods is released, and "it was [Red] doing the inviting"; (19).
Hoogland's lyrical narrative draws the reader through the meandering pathways of the woods, our natural, shared, feminist mythology of 'Red Riding Hood', and enables us to feel the cemented girl breaking through her social bars and becoming the food of the forest: "her mouth ripe as the berry bush"; (52).
This is an exceptional retelling of an age-old fable. Why do we repress our innate, natural selves? To what purpose, and for whom? As Red experiences a coming of age, realizing, "how [her] body has always wanted to be a basket of gifts,"; (27), readers will recognize this girl's future perception of the aging Wolf (and World) as just a man, "hoping to fluff up his hair"; (83).
-- by Kara A. Smith
Submitted on May 30, 2011 in By David.
