Penelope: The Story of the Half-Scalped Woman--A Narrative Poem (Contemporary Poetry Series)
paper 0-8130-1639-8 Convinced of her notion that each story is holy/to someone, Schott versifies a fascinating episode in colonial American history for this narrative sequence: an early settler of present-day New Jersey with the same first name as the poet is nearly killed, then is saved, by the local Lenape Indians. This slight fourth collection by Schott never overreaches, and it wears its historical learning lightlythe Indian words and customs are smoothly integrated into these short-lined poems with their rough rhymes and simple rhythms. Mostly in the voice of her 17th-century namesake, Scott follows her character from childhood as the daughter of a pious Protestant dissenter in England to her eventual flight to Holland, where she meets her first husband and poses for a graven image by a female Dutch artist. After a rough passage to America, Penelopes husband is murdered by Indians, and she herself is nearly eviscerated and partly scalped. Rescued by a sympathetic native, and stitched up by the Indians, Penelope rejoins the Dutch settlers and marries again, only to convince her new husband that they should take their large familyshe bears ten childrento live farther from the city and closer to her Indian friends. Breeding her own tribe, Penelope Stout abandons her faith and seems to go native in response to the generosity of the locals, who warn her family of impending strife. Schotts little poems, for the most part, tell the tale plain, and the author provides a welcome appendix of facts and sources. Some editorial intrusionsa poem, for example, in which Schott bonds with her colonial sistermar an otherwise modest exercise.  --Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.--This text refers to theHardcoveredition.