Review by Booklist Review
This is a wonderful, expansive, philosophic book. Mitchell attempts to capture the ineffable as it appears in the ordinary. Small, even tiny, moments are exploded to reveal their treasures. It's reminiscent of nothing less than Joyce's Finnegans Wake, for Mitchell shows how consciousness permeates the world while the world permeates our consciousness. Although dreamlike, the realities she documents here--the piano playing what it wishes despite the pianist's efforts, "the anonymity of light before the descent"--may be truer than those we more readily perceive. ~--Pat Monaghan
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
The boldness of Mitchell's ( The Water Inside the Water ) tone is established with startling openings and audacious connections from one subject to the next. Sometimes there are flashes of Erica Jong's sexual bravura or Diane Wakoski's offbeat associative leaps. In one poem the speaker begins with the memory of a line of conversation, ``He said I want to kiss you in a way / no one has ever kissed you before.'' After recalling fantasies of adolescence, she returns to the braggadocio of the opening remark, far more memorable than the kiss itself, which was offered like the careless eating of an apple or pear. Mitchell's imagery is often quite attractive. For example, a dressmaker's house visited in childhood was entirely ``furred like a cat.'' Most of the poems are built in informal and colloquial blocks of language, the lines breaking to emphasize ironies. The settings are various: Cuba in the '50s, a bar in Chicago, the pond outside a Howard Johnson's motel. In the last poem lies a confession: ``my subject is not what it seems. I want / to explain how it is for me / all the time now. . . . '' In fact, this unabashed self-absorption is at the center of all the work. (Apr.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Mitchell's poems demonstrate an intelligence that is rare, an elegance and grace uncommon in contemporary poetry. Her world is one of mystery, at once familiar and exotic. Memories melt into dreams. The language is charged, words are valued, and every moment is allowed to play out forever, fresh, vital. A piano wants to be played ``like a pinball machine, it wants the man to lean his weight/ against the music until the sound tilts. But the man/ wanders inside the piano like someone looking/ for an elevator in a drafty building.'' The precision of her imagery, the similes and the leaping metaphors are regular sources of delight. A line from Holderlin about a plant brings forth a memory story (more story than memory, it turns out) of a handicapped childhood friend. Patrons of public libraries will find much to appreciate here.-- Louis McKee, Painted Bride Arts Ctr., Philadelphia (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Booklist Review
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Review by Library Journal Review
