Allison Benis White

"I am interested in suddenness," she says in one poem. But I often feel like the poems are not sudden enough. She turns over ideas again and again so that the connections between experiences, images, and words are made in multiple ways (and beautifully so, too). But I feel that she takes too long to do this, even within the span of a poem, so that the writing feels overly labored (the hardest thing in poetry is working really hard on a poem and yet having the finished product seem effortless). I wish more of her poems could let those images out without reaching for the connections as much, when they move quickly and somehow just make sense, not in the logical way, but deeply embedded in the language and mouth-feel way:

The truth is, I'm afraid of God--whoever I am, creation is over. And the bronze horse stands under an apple tree, a bronze jockey on her back. The human heart is an apple, he says, pointing to an X-ray of his chest. But what shape or comfort can I make with my mind? The horse holds up her cardboard sign, All words can do now is say.

See? That is good stuff. But it's not representative of the book in general. Normally she takes longer to get there. Also, I'm not sure the Degas stuff is working for me, but that could just be my ignorance of Degas in general. I have a feeling that the Degas stuff feels a little like a structure she is hanging on to, but is entirely unneeded. Again, that is just a feeling. Along with that point, I also feel like she is trying to direct the poems too much. So many of them are about her parents and about dancing, that I feel like they are not as organic as they could be. There is something that could arise and surprise the writer herself, but I feel like this is not happening in enough poems, but that they are merely following the arc of the book. Thus, there is a sense of stiltedness to it all, even though it's a very beautiful stilted-ness.

Despite my reservations, she's a good poet and I'm eager to see what direction she takes in future books.… (mer)