From Publishers Weekly
This debut collection opens with a mysterious and linguistically lush epigraph from Elizabeth Bowen that sets the tone for the poems which follow. Much of the work depends upon provocative, and often beautiful, imagery: a sleep mask, a man's lip cut by his lover's fingernail, an ornamented egg cup. But too often such figures lose vitality because the larger structure of the poetry is ineffective. Bendall builds a homage to Louise Bogan with short and precise couplets, yet after a promising beginning, the poem dissolves into a hermetic conversation with the poet: "I couldn't give them / to you anymore / than you could give me / the rest of your sweet / fields and unstrung leaves. / (Is that too baroque?)" In fact, it is too baroque; the imagery functions only as ornament and the language is not musical enough to compensate for the loss of clarity. A large portion of the text is devoted to imaginary dialogues with women in the arts; by far, the most successful is the "Conversation with Eva Hesse." The poem is constructed like a simple interview ("Where do you live?" "What do you say to your lover?") and the answers show a true insight into the artist's genius for absurd juxtaposition.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
At first, Huddle seems concerned with the "winged shadow" of birds as they cross "wet-streaking glass." Yet, like A.R. Ammons's, these poems, watermarked with pain, want above all to place "the furious energy" of natural law in a context of how humans make sense of confused relationships. In elegant watercolor prints of New England, he documents brief encounters of the spirit, how men and women, lives assigned to sunlight, find subtle perceptions of bonding not enough to escape from "the nature of yearning." Interpenetrated by the water and air of a lake, a husband and wife (in a magical poem "The Swimmer") undergo a transposition of selfhood that purifies but does not release the sorrow of the cost of love. Behind self-sacrifice, even heroism, are "unspeakable details" of what we do to each other. For a poet like Huddle, so quickened by yearning, there's no asylum. For most collections. For a collection of Huddle's essays, see The Writing Habit: Essays , p. 118.--Ed.
-Frank Allen, West Virginia State Coll., Institute
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
-Frank Allen, West Virginia State Coll., Institute
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
