Bidwell Ghost | Literary Criticism & Book Review

Bidwell Ghost Critical Overview

Several critics point out Erdrich's use of specific locations in her poetry as a means to discover a subject fully. Carolyne Wright, in her essay published in the Northwest Review, points out that Erdrich's "work is so clearly rooted in its setting and milieu as to enable her to achieve access to the invisible: the realm of myth, which must always be grounded in the actual and tangible." Literally a "ghost story," this specific description of location and movement toward the invisible realm of myth is evident in "Bidwell Ghost." Also apparent, according to other critics, is a sense of blending between the human and natural worlds. In a book review published in Poetry, Vernon Shetley terms this effect Erdrich's "landscape of human loneliness." Wright agrees, concluding that "Erdrich's poetry responds to this aim by finding in the patterns of the visible world of nature and the received legacy of...
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