I liked "The Voyage of the Rays" and especially "Elvis the Performing Octopus". Several other poems also have their moments. She uses lists of images (perhaps "waves" or "narratives" is more accurate than "lists" - shades of Selima Hill). She uses situations which seem to offer few possibilities but she manages to suffuse them with emotion and intent. It helps of course that her subject matter is often "love", whose emotive power radiates so strongly that most anything can serve as a correlative. Speaking of bottles at a bottle-bank she writes
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They fall one by one into the dark. Will you love this? Forever? I ask |
Some of the imagery has a derivative feel though - a swan is "a pure white question,/with its underwater dream in tow" and "Far below a fishing boat chugged/like a toy, pushing its blue V". She too has the "all stanzas must have the same number of lines" affectation. Reviews of the book are on her website.
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