REVIEWS

for A SHIMMERING THAT GOES WITH US, Finishing Line Press, 2005

from www.themontserratreview.com by Grace Cavalieri

“Many books are written about the freedom to grieve. In this limited collector’s edition
Mary Ann Larkin champions death in the only way that comforts, with poems. The birth and
the death of a friendship are chronicled here and we find how these are interchangeable
and carry the same spirit, transversing time and distance….Mary Ann Larkin tells of her
friend, Barbara Angell, passing away because of breast cancer. The compendium is an
elegant shattering of modern women who hark back to womenfolk as friends throughout all
literature….It is always a contribution to show grief as other than drab. Sadness, worry
and prayer have always been handmaidens to poetry, and the luster of these poems follow
Mary Ann’s friend beyond their friendship and even beyond that.”

for THE COIL OF THE SKIN, WWPH, 1982

           from Columbia Road Review by Maxine Combs, June 1983

           “In the title poem of Mary Ann Larkin’s The Coil of the Skin the poet
describes old men who ‘remember watching a father paring an apple / the coil of
the skin / wondering when it would break’; and this image, the spiraled paring of
apple skin, acts as metaphor for the poet’s belief that the continuity of life--in this
case the line that reaches from grandparents to intimations of the poet’s own
death--is sustained by love, and especially by physical contact.

           “In ‘Grandma’ the poet recounts how her grandmother ‘walked the dark
streets / in the wet spring after Grandpa died’ and how the priest sent her home
to her children and how ‘There was no one to speak for / your untouched skin’
as she obediently settled into an uneasy truce with her widowhood. What she
notices in family photos of her now dead mother is how ’In the pictures / they
cling to each other,’ (‘The Island on Sunday Afternoons’) and what she
remembers in ‘Riding on a Streetcar with my Father’ was that ‘My father’s arm
keeps me / from blending into the darkness.’

           “The sense of touch is particularly emphasized in poems that deal with the
poet’s own love life (either absent or present). In ‘Adriatic Songs’ the poet
notices ‘There is variety / in white on white / silver-grey lichen / against white
rocks.... / Your hand / on my belly.’ Or, in ‘In the Meadow’ Larkin asks, ‘Is it not
so, love / that once your sun-hot hair / burnt my hand.’

           “In ‘Pilgrims’ the poet makes the lack of physical love a tangible loss:
                     I awake with your absence in my arms
                     the taste of you not in my mouth
                     My aunt the nun slept alone
                     I picture us both wrapped in her shawl
                     We go like pilgrims
                     around some high stone wall
                     Girls in white dresses
                     look down on us
                     We are not
                     who we want to be

           “And in the final poem in the collection, the lovely ‘Interlude,' Larkin
conjures up incorporeal life, what it will be like ultimately to surrender the
physical world, the coil of the skin:
                     Will death take me as sweetly
                     Will I moan and go willingly
                     .....................................
                     I picture a field going on
                     light and shadow like today
                     only we won’t care
                     Or will we give anything
                     just to feel
                     a drop from the frying pan
                     pop, against our skin

                     O love,
                     we will have no skin

           from Washington Review by Richard Flynn, Feb-Mar 1983

           “This year Washington Writers Publishing House (WWPH) has published
one competent and often moving collection, The Coil of the Skin, by Mary Ann
Larkin. Larkin’s collection is indeed satisfying. From the typography and design
to the quality of the poetry, it is evident that the greatest care was taken with The
Coil of the Skin. The book’s subject is the family, with a particular focus on the
nature of affection, both sexual and filial. The tone of the volume is sometimes
detached, sometimes involved, at times superficially disinterested or
disconcerting, but always humane.

           “Remarkably free of preconceptions, prejudices or stereotypes, Larkin’s
work demonstrates a willingness to use the poem to discover what she really
wants to say. Even in the less successful poems, one does not get the feeling
that she has let the poem go unfinished. There are heroes (usually female) in
Larkin’s book whose most heroic quality is that of perseverance. The poet
seems to practice what she admires. Just as the strong women in The Coil of
the Skin retain their integrity and autonomy against the odds, so Larkin heeds
her models by offering the reader poems marked by those qualities.”