His second new volume, A Marvin Bell Reader fares better. Moving from poems to journals to essays, readers get a clear picture of the poet, who may at times be frivolous but is never careless. As in Ava, Maso explores the nature of desire and the erotic with lush imagery and a cumulative vocabulary of repetition shared with the reader. Catherine has a voracious appetite for sex, rich food, and everything French. She hears a large, undeniable grief of bells.
Flowers float in their watery globes.
This is good-bye. I touch the American woman on the shoulder. She smiles at me. You think we wouldn't have needed much. For the fruit, and the light, and the hat.