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Books
by Barbara Helfgott Hyett
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Natural
Law
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Natural
Law
by Barbara Helfgott Hyett
Salt River Press, Winona, MN, 1989.
For most people, a visit to the street where one grew
up brings back a flood of childhood memories. But for
the poet Barbara Helfgott Hyett, native of Atlantic City,
NJ, there is no street to which to return. Empty lots
have replaced the rows of buildings, and not a single
apartment house remains. Casinos have taken the neighborhood
where a generation once lived and played. |
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Helfgott
Hyett explores Atlantic City's transition in Natural Law published
in 1989 by Northland Press of Winona/Salt River Press. First
in the Salt River Poetry Series, the book is a reflection
on social history and considers Atlantic City from its invention
in the late 1800's through the razing of the tenements in
the inlet in the 1980's. The poet brings to life the "honky-tonk
frontier" of tourist attractions: the High-Diving Horse,
the Elephant Hotel, the Miss America parade. The collection
also contains poems about the laws that govern the physical
universe, the animal kingdom in particular, and, in a series
of lyric elegies, the human condition at large.
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"Hyett's
Atlantic City comes clamoring back in these deeply rooted
poems. Her loyalties and losses become ours, bursting their
colors 'across the rented walls/of our childhood."
- Maxine Kumin, Pulitzer Prize winning poet
"Barbara
Helfgott Hyett's songs reach into the depths of our contemporaries'
soul and memory."
- Elie Weisel, Nobel Peace Prize Recipient
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