An Introduction to Ginny Threefoot by Elizabeth Robinson


 
 
In these two poems, Ginny Threefoot is ostensibly measuring ambiguities—of sound, of childhood. What is really happening, however, is that Threefoot is keying her perceptual sensitivities to the “sound of /seeking what is hiding” and thus the quotidian shivers with new potency and potential. The subject(s) in these poems bear the vulnerability of being a child—that is, one for whom selfhood is still an unfolding project. Against the forces that would suppress that unfolding (shh, shut), Threefoot opposes the ingenuity of seeking, the “sound of/the self.” In the subtle susurrus of a breeze among trees, amid the murk of the water’s surface, caught in the complexities of family, Threefoot works her transformations. “Where is a person to go?” she asks. There is no answer, only witness. Time’s Mobius Strip in continuous movement: “now I am/then I was.”

 
 
Read “ambiguities of sound” by Ginny Threefoot >>
 
Read “ambiguities of childhood” by Ginny Threefoot >>