Shieling

"Half wail, half exultation," is how an Apache death song has been described. In a sense, all poetry is a kind of ritual death song-celebrating life, grieving its loss, and conjuring the courage to leave it. Cottrell's Shieling collection does all of this and more in language that is compelling in its musicality-more so than any I've read in a long time-and highly original and apt in its metaphor. Every poem offers a surprise. Cottrell's perspective is informed by such far-flung knowledge and such deep appreciation for the joys life has brought him in childhood, love, and marriage that his comparisons challenge the reader to keep up. One of the most unique features of this work is the poet's use of "obsolete" words, often of Scottish origin, suggesting the community we share with the long ago and far away. These old words offer a kind of consolation in their homeliness born out of a time when people lived closer to the natural world, less insulated from its cold and heat, seeing its ugliness and beauty up close and every day. He manages this comforting romance of words with an ironic take on objects of cliche that chides sentimentalism-sometimes with comedy, often with profundity. Whatever the key of his music in individual poems, the collection refuses easy avenues of escape from facing death, as those avenues risk fully experiencing life. -Edwina Pendarvis