"Confessions of an Angry Woman"
Confessions of an Angry Woman” is a book of verse. The moment I cracked it open, I got angry.
Why in the world did the publisher choose such a tiny little typeface? I’ll have to squint for 161 pages! Not eight-point type, not six-point type, but four-point type? Ridiculous! Who chose that? And why?
Why, indeed? How we human beings love to rail at the world and how we women love to wail about our love life. Parkite Michelle Huggins has compiled a book of poems written when life threw her curveballs. If you’ve ever been mystified, angry, or depressed about a relationship gone south, you will find meaning here. I confess that every page resonated for me.
“I have difficulty maintaining relationships,” the poet told me bluntly. “I’m frustrated with men and with my own inability to figure them out.”
Me too, sister. There was the Frenchman in college, the skier in Boston, and the deep sea diver I finally married. (We’re not together any more.) How many women can’t look back over their lives and confess they’re still mystified over what happened in certain relationships?
As a vertically challenged, rather funny-looking redhead (not my natural color), I’ve often wondered what it would be like to be a beautiful, statuesque blonde like Huggins. Surely women so blessed have it easy! Apparently not always. Huggins’ “Bust of You” is about an impossible relationship in which the poet sees the handwriting on the wall and can’t accept it. She laments, “You zig and I zag . . . you leave me in places uncharted . . . the orbit you choose takes you far from me . . .”
“Poems are catharsis,” Michelle explained. “They have helped me vent during the most prolific and profound periods of my life. Discussion with others only serves so much—the answers reside somewhere in you.” To this point, the book’s signature poem, “Confessions of an Angry Woman,” cautions the reader:
In short, you won’t get your way
Unless you determine that whatever happens, it’s OK
And the lessons you need to learn
Only come on others’ terms
And fighting is no release
Until you quit, your battles repeat.
This stanza is instructive, especially for young women who don’t yet have the perspective that comes with experience. In some ways, Huggins’ book appears to be pitched to the younger generation. Photographs shot by Park City local Scott Peterson depict a lovely slim midriff adorned with a belly button ring, a long-legged model in mini-skirt and boots, and a curvaceous blonde posing in the nude. When I discovered that the model is the poet herself, the intimacy of the poetry was enhanced.
Along with the unique set of photographs, Huggins’s book is remarkable because it’s self-published. The founder and CEO of Deer Creek Title Company in Park City, Huggins is no stranger to orchestrating complex projects. “I published the book myself by hiring a freelance editor, a photographer, a layout artist, and a printer,” she explained. “If you’re going to self-publish, Utah is the place to do it. With all of the Mormon family histories produced here, there is a solid system of self-publishing.”
As for the tiny print I found so irksome, I discovered that Huggins selected the font herself. “I like the idea of the softness and classic nature of script. I chose vellum paper, red binding, and satin ribbon because I love my Old English poetry books with their vellum pages, leather bindings, and ribbons in the spine for marking pages,” she said. A reasonable answer to my unreasonable rant!
Michelle Huggins’s verse reveals answers to a lot of life’s unreasonable questions. “Confessions of an Angry Woman” (Deer Creek Publications, 2005) is available at Dolly’s Bookstore on Main Street.
When writer Lola Beatlebrox is angry, she throws dishes. She lives on a 40-acre ranch with metal sculptor Zafod Beatlebrox, two llamas, two dogs, three cats, and 45 plastic plates.
Your comments may be edited for brevity and foul language.