Customer Reviews

Desdemona's Fire

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There is nothing old here--this book is all new energy, confronting a much-ignored subject in American letters: interraciality and the politics of identity and gender. Kocher can't go wrong with poems like "Braiding" and "My Mother as Daedalus" which weave humor, wisdom and irony with the skill of a five-book veteran. I'm looking forward to the next one!!!

"Desdemona's Fire" is a fearless book. It is fearless in its confrontation with pain. It is fearless in its transformation of hatred into wisdom. But that does not quite describe the many raptures of the verse. In the poem, "The Siren's Sound," the speaker " . . . hear[s] the wild hearts of strangers/ fighting for their lives." It is that type of listening that this verse demands. We must listen to this brave new voice like children listening to the voice of a loved one speak of experience through parable. We must surrender ourselves to these poems, let them wash over us as if drenched in flame.

Ms. Kocher's first book gives me everything I crave as a reader of poetry. Fearlessness, clarity, abandon, and form. The consistently elegant music of her work is so inviting I read the whole book three times in two days! It is mesmerizing. The questions these poems ask--what happens after death? Who am I? How does loss change to peace?--are the questions that make poetry matter. In a time when many poets hide behind their music, Kocher's subtle shifts in rhythm deepen the content and reward the reader with a clarity I for one have come to need. Read "Hecate in the City" and be dazzled. Read "Susan's Hair" and delight in the lush life of this book.

The poems and prose in this book make you want to laugh and cry,one of the most brilliantly moving things, I'veread.

Literary jargon awash with oldprose,out of date thoughts andideas but not in Kocher's newbook,stunningly brutal yetbeautiful in it's sensetivityto a young girls past.