Little Fires

Richard Wilbur says that Beth Bentley writes "...poems which are alive in a dull and noisy time." The poems in Little Fires are travels to the interior. As a "ghost, traversing a dim gallery, sleep-walking in time's museum" she searches for an éclaircie, that rare moment of illumination, found in language and memory.

The first poem in Little Fires, Victorian Girlhood, begins,

It was not as if she ever perceived
the "either" or "or" as she emerged
to the lake's sparkling surface,
glisteningly fresh, as if water
were all of the world, her lucent
extension, without encumbrances,
the unnecessary alternatives of
east or west beaches, grass islands
or rafts; floated there feeling
happily expected (since there were no
accidents then, only the inevitable's
curtain stuck on its rod, unable
to move back or forth).

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