From Publishers Weekly
Ranging in subject from the metaphysical woes of consumer culture to the attractions of silence and "The Seven Veils of Spring," Equi (Voice Over) combines two virtues that don't normally go together. On the one hand, this book contains short, witty, easily understood poems about shoes, hair and shopping; on the other, the poems explore, with care and wariness, the language we use to talk about them. Terse stanzas and whittled-down remarks in these poems go beyond her previous work in reacting to every delight and annoyance of metropolitan life. One series of half-comic poems entitled "fantasy" presents "Homeless club kids/ living on rice, beans/ and Gitanes"; another series ("Return of the Sensuous Reader") invites us to "change the gender of all the pronouns in a poem/ and see for yourself." Equi even manages to touch-lightly, distantly and effectively-on life in the city after Sept. 11, both in "Can't Complain" (with its "anti- apocalypse") and in the journal-like "Reset" ("Starting over./ No loitering"). Equi's most frequent attitude is a gently appalled feminism, a stance one step back from everything; her best work combines lyric depth with restrained and epigrammatic wit, respecting not just "the so-called power of words" but a quiet resistance to them.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
About the Author
Equi's succinct, witty, and innovative work has been widely published, appearing in the The New Yorker, Norton's Postmodern American Poetry, and four recent volumes of The Best American Poetry. A central figure in Chicago's poetics scene during the 70s and 80s, she now lives in New York where she teaches at City College, New School and NYU.
