From Library Journal
This second collection from Hall, whose first book To Put the Mouth To (Morrow, 1992) was selected for the National Poetry Series, won this year's Ohio State University Press/The Journal Award in Poetry. A relatively short manuscript footnoted in the style of Marianne Moore, it pulls Moore's kind of punctilious detail, formal music, and fantastic flights into the decidedly unladylike territory of breast cancer as suffered by the narrator's deceased mother, famous victims like Shirley Temple Black and Ingrid Bergman, and ultimately the narrator herself. Many of these poems were written out of rage; "Mother," for example, is a tirade that reappropriates parts of better-known poems: "For how adult is it to wander lonely as a fool, Slouching toward snowy wood/ So often in the middle of the journey." Unfortunately, it is hard to determine exactly what this mother did wrong besides dress too elegantly and possibly pass along the genetic malady of cancer. In this difficult, emotional terrain, however, it is to Hall's credit that she rarely loses control of the writing. The odd, brilliant introductory poem, for instance, in which a girl experiences her mother as a hovering butterfly is powerfully allusive, erotic, and utterly convincing. A strong second collection.?Ellen Kaufman, Dewey Ballantine Law Lib., New York.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Review
At Play With Purity
Bergman's Cancer
Descendent
Enter Invisible
Godmother's Will
Ink And Green Wash: In The Oncologist's Waiting Room
Interior With Metal Instruments
A Little April
The Monarch Birthmark
Mother
The Other Girls In Lettuce
Reflections Lost In The Ladies Room
Rimbaud's Cancer
Selected For The Mass
St. Peregrinus' Cancer
Stamina
Temple
To Come With Accessories
Touched Relics
Was It
-- Table of Poems from Poem Finder®
Bergman's Cancer
Descendent
Enter Invisible
Godmother's Will
Ink And Green Wash: In The Oncologist's Waiting Room
Interior With Metal Instruments
A Little April
The Monarch Birthmark
Mother
The Other Girls In Lettuce
Reflections Lost In The Ladies Room
Rimbaud's Cancer
Selected For The Mass
St. Peregrinus' Cancer
Stamina
Temple
To Come With Accessories
Touched Relics
Was It
-- Table of Poems from Poem Finder®
