{"product_id":"penelope-the-story-of-the-half-scalped-woman-a-narrative-poem-9780813016399","title":"Penelope: The Story of the Half-Scalped Woman--A Narrative Poem","description":"\u003cp\u003e\"The poet's journey into the past and another culture, fired by eponymous inspiration, leads to discoveries, a new appreciation of lost moments. To bridge three centuries and create a verbal portrait though a picture is lacking is quite an achievement. Naturally, this effort will be compared to John Berryman's great poem about Anne Bradstreet, but to no harm.\"--David Ray\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"In this fascinating sequence Penelope Scambly Schott poignantly re-imagines a devastating story in language that brings together the sensibilities of centuries distant in time but not, at their most intimate, in feeling. She invokes her namesake with urgency and tact, a remarkable combination.\"--Rosellen Brown\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThis brilliant tour-de-force narrates the life of a woman shipwrecked in the 1640s on the shores of modern-day New Jersey, axed in the belly, half-scalped and left for dead by the Lenape Indians, then nursed back to health by them and taken into the tribe. And that's only the beginning. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e Penelope Scambly Schott has carefully researched the facts and woven them into a poetic page-turner. She cites her sources, provides a glossary and, best of all, indicates what is fact and what is fiction. Her technique is well chosen: the interior monologues, mostly of the heroine, Penelope Kent van Princis Stout, and, in a few poems, those of her namesake, the author. A more distant Penelope, the wife of Odysseus, is also invoked. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e The poems take us directly into the mind and heart of a strong woman, who is extraordinary partly because she thinks she is ordinary. With craftsmanship and feeling, Schott has limned unforgettable characters whose lives transcend the mostly ignoble history of settler-Native American relations.\u003cp\u003ePenelope Scambly Schott is the author of three previous collections of poems, most recently \u003ci\u003eThe Perfect Mother\u003c\/i\u003e, which won the Violet Reed Haas Prize for Poetry. She has also been awarded four fellowships by the New Jersey Council on the Arts.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"University Press of Florida","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50413248643346,"sku":"9780813016399","price":9.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_c9d040e7-0a21-4216-81e3-89edec6bcbea.jpg?v=1729351063","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/penelope-the-story-of-the-half-scalped-woman-a-narrative-poem-9780813016399","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}