|
|
Article: Conflicting emotions.(poetry anthologies by Chana Bloch and Kate Daniels)
- Article from:
- The Women's Review of Books
- Article date:
- May 1, 1999
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1999 Old City Publishing, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
|
The poems in Chana Bloch's third book, Mrs. Dumpty, are satisfyingly arranged in a circle of emotion and history as seamless as a wedding ring. Chronicling the dissolution of a long marriage, the book is a gallery of photographs of the couple and of the way the gradually failing light of love falls through the rooms of ordinary domestic life.
In the prefatory title poem Bloch constructs her version of the Humpty Dumpty rhyme:
The last time the doctors gave up I put the pieces together...
And now he's at my door again, begging in that leaky voice, and I start wiping the smear from his broken face. (p.xi)
After this preview of the pathos ...