Paula Bohince - Incident at the Edge of Bayonet Woods

Author Asks

1. Incident at the Edge of Bayonet Woods has been described as a mystery, but I also be consider it to be a love story. Does reading it one way or another have more resonance for you? How else could you describe it?

2. There seem to be several contradictions in the book. For example, the father domesticates deer in “Landscape with Sheep and Deer,” but then hunts them in “First Day of the Hunt.” Elsewhere, the father’s beauty is referenced, but he is also called “unlovely.” Are the apparent contradictions confusing, or do they add complexity to the story?

3. I love animals for their intensity and mysteriousness. At times, animals forecast important events in the book. Can you locate places where this occurs? How else, symbolically, do animals function in this collection?

4. In the speaker’s grief, is her faith in God or human beings shaken, or does her faith help her cope?

5. I’m fascinated with the idea of heaven, which might explain why it is mentioned many times in this book. What do you think heaven represents to the speaker that she obsesses over it?

6. The speaker doesn’t seem to pass judgment on the “apostles” and their incredible actions. What is your opinion of these characters? How does reading their individual “gospels” affect your view?

7. Four poems in Incident at the Edge of Bayonet Woods are acrostics. Is there something specific about the content of these poems that requires a special form? What seems particular about an acrostic that might be important to the poems?

8. The farm and its inhabitants seem incredibly isolated from the outside world: a newspaper is mentioned only once, as is a television show. How do you think isolation figures into the incidents that occur in the book?

9. We learn that the farm is an ancestral homestead and that the previous generations who occupied it also had difficult lives. Why do you think I’ve included poems about these ancestors?

10. Relationships between males and females seem fraught in this book; even the animals are given a gender. What do you think accounts for the various tensions?