Product Review

Now that gift returns to its origins in poetry. Viper Rum delves into the autobiographical subject matter of her two early collections (The Devil's Tour, New Directions, 1994, and Abacus, Wesleyan, 1987). Various beloveds are birthed and buried in these touching lyrics, some of which -- as the title suggests -- deal with drink: I cast back to those last years/I drank, alone nights at the kitchen sink, /bathrobed, my head hatching snakes, / while nay baby slept in his upstairs cage/and my marriage choked to death.... Exact and surprising, her poems take on the bedevilments of fate and grief with a diabolical edge of their own (Poetry). The prize-winning essay Against Decoration, which first set off a controversy in Parnassus, serves as an Afterword. In it, Karr attacks the popular toward ornament in contemporary poetry: the highbrow doily-making that for art today.