Murder, My Sweet
2008; University of Iowa; Volume: 38; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.17077/0021-065x.6437
ISSN2330-0361
Autores Tópico(s)Poetry Analysis and Criticism
ResumoLaura Mullen vaulted onto poetry scene in 1991 when her book, The Surface, was selected by National Poetry Series. In 1999, Contemporary Poetry Series of University of Georgia Press chose After I Was Dead, and The Tales of Horror came out from Kelsey St. Press. In 2005, University of California Press published Subject. Now Futurepoem publishes Murmur, winner of its annual prize. After fifteen years and five books, it seems high time to reconsider this fearless and funny writer, writer for whom no preposition is too minor to implode, writer who never hesitates to struggle with subjectivity, and subjunctive. This is a voice which came out of silence, and her chief determination seems to be rescue of subjects from consensio so often associated with silentium. This is an artist insisting upon her own palette, who evades easy, premixed codes. Oppositions turn upside down: the threatened is part of threat. Whiteness is nerve-wracking absence, while blackness is clarity?it's where things really happen, where they go bump in night. Syntax is not, as is thought, means to understanding; it presents greatest obstacle to communication: having found voice, we marginalized can only clank our chains and moan. Persuasion is not possible; having built us, language can tear us down. Image is of little use; mirror is dangerously distorted site, veneer on veneer. The only thing we know for sure is that speechlessness is unforgivable, and error will recur. The work never fails to surprise in its conjunction of something like thick description (see Clifford Geertz) and sheer symbolic verve. Clement Greenberg, Wittgenstein, Benjamin, Toulouse Lautrec, and Emily Dickinson all end up in avalanche gasping for breath. Mullen is an artist-intellectual with passion for life, specifically for life's tongue, for feel of words in mouth, for their potential?freed from syntax?in ear and on page, and for depth and breadth of any and every ordering. What she does
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