NEW ENGLAND LITERARY NEWS
A new poetry collection about a Cambridge woman unjustly hanged as a witch, and new National Endowment for the Humanities grants for local writers
By Nina MacLaughlin Globe Correspondent,Updated December 28, 2020, 10:44 a.m.
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Verses of the accused
In Cambridge in 1650, a woman was wrongly accused and hanged for bewitching her friendâs child to death. Shortly after her hanging, it came to light that the child froze to death because his nurse left him in the cold woods during a loverâs tryst. Such are the facts that drive Cambridge poet Denise Bergmanâs taut and propulsive book-length poem âThe Shape of the Keyholeâ (Black Lawrence). The poem unfolds over seven days, from the accusation to the farce of the trial to the public hanging and the too-late truth. Nightmare and silence are powerful forces on the scene, and Bergmanâs examinations of the different wavelengths of fear â of the woman accused, her a