In this third collection of poetry, Joyce Carol Oates offers her readers another experience of her uniquely personal - and therefore universal - vision. The poems vary in subject from nightmares and city graveyards to 'domestic miracles' and the family, but each of them is controlled by a sense of human struggle.
But Angel Fire is not merely a collection of poems. In terms of emotional and then mystical experience, it is a kind of lyric novella, in which poems are arranged to dramatize the evolution of a mind. Thus, the 'struggle' gives way to the vision that there is no real struggle, only confused perception, and the concluding poems become revelations.
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(@lsupress, 1 January 1973, hardback, 62 pages, bought from @AmazonUK)
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This is an earlier collection of Oates's poetry. I enjoyed Angel Fire a lot. Her poetry is as well-written and engaging as her fiction. I've read this before many years ago and hardly remember it so it felt like discovering this collection for the first time. This is also, sadly out of print. I enjoyed all of the poems in this collection. The poems are split into three similarly themed sections. Like the best poetry, the poems are rich and accessible. I especially liked The Small Still Voice Behind the Great Romances, Angel Fire and What We Fear From Dreams & Waking. I'd recommend this.
