Treason, Terese Svoboda's fourth book of poetry, is about betrayal: child to parent, wife to husband, a nation to its people. Short, sometimes gnomic or comic, many of the poems circle the subject of the mother as betrayer, creator and destroyer, seductive and maternal, the tie that terrorizes while it comforts.
Terese Svoboda, like Denis Johnson, publishes both fiction and poetry, and, also like Denis Johnson, is one of the best in both genres. In Treason, she is at the height of her powers where her style is becoming more identifiable (one thinks of Keats, Dickinson, James, Yeats, Plath, Ashbury), meaning this collection is political, highly poised, grand and intensely lyrical - a collection like none other. Sit back and let Treason work its terrible magic as its lines and images lead to each epiphany, each horror, and moment after moment of beauty.
