Books

The Fruit of Her Hands

In the Shadow of the Globe

Back Cover Blurbs Reviews Reader Responses Poems from the Book Performances

By the Waters

From Sidereality, Issue 3, Vol. 1
Pride, Passion, Art
Review by Loren Kleinman

Michelle Cameron's narrative poem In the Shadow of the Globe is an intelligent, thought provoking, and ambitious piece of art. She takes us on a extraordinary journey through Shakespeare's life and times. Cameron molds the poem into ten acts, which further detail Shakespeare's infidelities with the Dark Lady; his passion for work; the plague blanketing over London; the circumstances surrounding the construction of The Globe theater; and his company of actors. She creates a haunting type of historical fiction. The characters she invents, and pulls from history, carry with them an emotional universe that is distinct and comprehensible; they show us into their lives and at the same time stir our own imaginations.

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From The Pedestal Magazine, Issue 20, Vol. 4, February 23-April 21
In the Shadow of the Globe
Reviewed by Jim Boring

First, Michelle Cameron has written a small classic that will be around for a long time. In the Shadow of the Globe is an imagining of lives and events connected with the founding of The Globe Theatre made famous by the plays of William Shakespeare. Cameron uses a hybrid form that borrows from antique playbills to guide the narrative and as a way to keep the reader located relative to the unfolding events. But that clever and very useful structural device pales next to the accessible beauty of the poetry she has written.

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From Offcourse, Issue 19, Winter 2004
In the Shadow of the Globe: Where History Comes to Life
Reviewed by Janet Buck

While Michelle Cameron's poetry collection, In the Shadow of the Globe, is packed with deft references and allusions to Shakespearean history and the book will, without a doubt be studied in classrooms for decades to come, her manuscript is poignant and enlightening to every reader with a beating heart -- for she explores the entire theater of human love -- its foiled plans, its powerful longings, and sometimes lucky resolutions of bliss.

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From Small Spiral Notebook, Volume II, Issue 4
In the Shadow of the Globe
Reviewed by Summer Lopez

It is always refreshing when the humanity of a genius such as Shakespeare is celebrated. His gift would not be as remarkable if he were somehow superhuman —- it is his flaws and the fact that he was no more or less a man than anyone else that make his brilliance all the more astonishing and important. In the Shadow of the Globe mixes history and imagination, just as Shakespeare did, to create a portrait of a way of life, a community whose equal love for art and pleasure would be echoed later in the Golden Age of Hollywood and the heyday of the Beat poets.

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From The Absinthe Literary Review, Spring 2004
In the Shadow of the Globe
Reviewed by Charles Allen Wyman

This well-mounted poem cycle deals with the history, both real and created, surrounding the Globe theatre and its cast of attending actors, patrons, and others. Not surprisingly, William Shakespeare is the centerpiece around which the tale spins. And spin it does.

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From Eclectica Magazine, April/May 2005
One Woman in Her Time: Michelle Cameron's In the Shadow of the Globe
Reviewed by Gilbert Wesley Purdy

As in all such plays, including Shakespeare's, the raw material for the characters Cameron depicts is the stuff of her own life and the world around her. This accounts for the fact that, while she has clearly done some homework on the historical period, the tone is contemporary. She has wisely been frugal with period references and phrasing.

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