Diana, Charles & the Queen (American Poets Continuum)
Heyen has written extensively on the Holocaust and here continues his interest in historical subject matter, turning to the House of Windsor. The result is a clever, off-beat narrative comprising 323 eight-line rhymed "poems" that explore the gulf between modern realities and the glamour of romance ("the stuff of fairy tales"). Feeling "comic sorrow and admiration," Heyen probes the tangled behavior of famous people for "the origins of indiscretion & stupidity." "Princess of the lens," Diana emerges as the major voice in this semifictionalized sequence (an author's note informs that this book was completed before Diana's death). "Miserable and divine," growing up on Barbara Cartland romances, "shy/ aggrieved, bulimic" Diana faces many problems. Unfortunately, the anecdotal, contrived form of this work, which readers will find peculiar, trivializes rather than enlarges Heyen's considerable poetic ability and fails to do justice to Diana's life (or death). Overall, a well-meant attempt to transform current events into the order of poetry; recommended for graduate-school libraries.?Frank Allen, Northhampton Community Coll., Tannersville, Pa.Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.