The Dig and Hotel Fiesta (Illinois Poetry)
"I am what is wrong with America" declares the poet, and the irony is gorgeous, the self-reproach sparkling with enough braggadocio to out-flash Las Vegas. Emanuel is a master of such double-edged, hard-boiled delivery, and often assumes a customized toughness to clip a wildly emotional character, to regulate her speaker's narcissistic wavering from "raptures of self-regard" to sloughs of self-destructiveness. "I am so tired," she writes, "I could lie down among these trees . . . / And let the earth take one slow liberty / After another." This is remarkable work, and readers will be grateful that Emanuel's two previously published books are now available in one rich volume. A great auteur, she imbues her sets with a crisp psychology, revealing the "eternal verity" in the quick dramas they backdrop. A great poet, she devastates and delights-often at once, as life does, but more intelligibly, acutely. "I am a pebble . . ." she concludes, "a loose thread, / nothing, really, the unimportant / and, therefore, immortal."Copyright © 1996, Boston Review. All rights reserved.--From The Boston Review