From Publishers Weekly
Karr's ( Abacus ) collection encompasses traditional subjects and forms: elegies for friends, homages to mentors, love poems, fantasies inspired by the arts (Don Giovanni or an early Renaissance etching), confessions, poems about children and friends and the passing of parents. The technique is controlled, not ostentatious, and one senses here a conscious link to the work of older poets such as Larkin and Levertov. Karr's strength lies in her delicate and meticulous control of detail. Characteristically, she describes a cat's nighttime prowl with humor and precision: " . . . he pounced and rabbit-kicked my head. / I had to disentangle from my hair / all four sets of claws, then tossed him / out into the pyramid of boxes / we'd erected in the yard." Such loving attention to seemingly insignificant events is reminiscent of the early work of Adrienne Rich and the use of imagery is similarly evocative ("When the moon / clicked over the sun like a black lens / over a white eye. . . "). Karr's work generally falls into clipped stanzas, the lines flowing over for an effect of ironic tension appropriate for much of the "devilish" material with which she is concerned. While the poet's unflinching consciousness stands out in this text, the poetic voice is not completely developed.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Evil is the theme of this second book by Karr ( Abacus, LJ 9/15/87), and these dark poems are movingly adept. Her material is challenging. "Coleman," the first and best poem, is about a fatal run-in between a small-town gang and the black Southern teenager whom the narrator loves. Not only can Karr handle this kind of subject matter without sentimentality; she is also accomplished at natural-sounding formal meter: "When he stands to cough the syrup from his lungs,/ arrive to sponge him cool, and he cries no/ and no and no, the only syllable" ("Croup"). Occasionally, Karr moves beyond the tight confessional lyric at which she excels to the third-person narrative: in "Don Giovanni's Confessor," for example, the appalled sinner confesses to his priest, who is then thrust into his own horrific recollection. While the jacket blurb claims that Karr writes "for everyday readers," these are complex, intellectual poems. They demand and withstand many readings, and for that one can be grateful. Recommended.
- Ellen Kaufman, Dewey Ballantine Law Lib., New York
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
- Ellen Kaufman, Dewey Ballantine Law Lib., New York
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
