This document provides summaries of and commentary on Emily Bilman's poetry collection "A Woman By A Well". The collection explores themes of human fallibility, love, desire, death, exile, and overcoming distress. Bilman uses her "forever pen" to weigh the world and speak beyond surfaces to higher universal meanings. Her poetry gives voice to the strength of womankind and embodies its power through her writing. Reviews praise her powerful message and language, saying her work rallies readers like Joan of Arc with sword held high.

1. In these poems, the writer explores the deepest and most mysterious aspects of herself
and we, the readers, are assisted in our own self-explorations. The sense of exile from
the world and from oneself which Emily explores, goes all the way back to that most
potent and enduring of myths: the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of
Eden. Like Edwin Muir, Emily convinces the reader that this expulsion from paradise
was not all loss and that exile can deepen human perceptions and can lead to a breathless
sense of freedom. In a number of the poems in this collection, one senses a constant
striving to cleanse the windows of perception, to see the world with a dazzling clarity
as if viewing the everyday world for the very first time. In the words of the Scottish
poet, we are led to glimpse the marvellous in the mundane.
James Knox Whittet, poet
President of the Suffolk Poetry Society
In this collection, with her passionate, ever-observant eye, Emily Bilman weighs the world
with her forever pen. She writes of human fallibility, love, desire, and death, the body and its
limits, poetic creativity, nature and longing, exile and loss and our capacity to overcome
distress. She speaks of how exile sharpens our awareness to such an extent that it makes us
transcend our alienating differences and increases our alterity. Throughtout the book, she
senses beyond the seemingly transient landscape its higher universal significance: “I glaze
the corn field into // the mirror of myself and speak // to you, my host, conscious // of our
confluent breaths.” (from “Awareness”)
Bruce Kauffmann, Poet and Editor
Emily Bilman is more than a woman with a message, more than a talented poet. Through
her poetry she embodies the strength of womankind and gives voice to that strength
through her writing. Her powerful message comes alive in A WOMAN BY A WELL. We
get to know her and through her, we get to know ourselves. Careful readings will help us
reach the ultimate conclusion that the poet is speaking for all mankind and not only for
and about women alone. Her language is strong and powerful and we are forced to pay
attention to what she says. It is as if we were listening to Queen Boadicea or Joan of Arc
rallying the troops with sword held high.
Brian E. Wrixon, Author
P O E T R Y £12.00
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