From Publishers Weekly
Katrovas's ( Snug Harbor ) characteristic tautness of language and lyrical intensity slacken here, but his singular voice and unvarnished vision remain constant and convincing. Once again, the streets of New Orleans--where to live "is to reconsider, / daily . . . / the crumbling communities of dead / the holiness of closure"--provide a fitting backdrop for the poet's concerns, the ghosts of his own past as well as the city's nocturnal figures: waiters in gaudy dives; a "brilliant, illiterate neighbor, / who seems never to sleep,"; and drag queens "who mope from bars . . . / to greet with clicking heels the light that saddens them." It is in the "horror / of the light," the poet suggests, that we see ourselves for who we really are, as in the title poem where he remembers himself as a child "before the public mirror . . . / a hair more than nothing, / whom I could destroy simply by closing my eyes." In the ideal life, says Katrovas, "there are no mirrors," and perhaps there should be fewer in these poems--the repetitive, forced mirror imagery undermines the book's edge and urgency.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
