The first section of this anthology affirms the poet's sensitivity for rhythms and wordplay. The second is told in a starkly modern feminist style and the third is a collection of 45 previously published poems arranged alphabetically.
The strength of Carol Frost's Love and Scorn: New and Selected Poems lies not only in the excellence of her work but in the very presentation, which gives a new vitality to her most beloved and familiar poems. This collection will most assuredly find Frost new readers and thrill those already acquainted with her work.
The volume is arranged in three sections. The first, "New Poems", affirms Frost's sensitivity for rhythms and wordplay, as in the poem "Matins":
...I've made myself ill with the glory
in the unleavened garden
disgorged the lies and scared
away with a stick the snake.
"Abstractions", the second part of the book, is an exercise in form and frugality, deftly executed.
In part 3, "Selections", earlier poems have been alphabetically ordered, creating a new frame for these works. In this arrangement, the poems can be read in the context of poetry itself, not in the light of chronology, which highlights Frost's impressive eye for detail and the poignancy of the language, musical and thrilling, transfiguring each work into empathy.
