The Master Letters
Three mysterious letters (two beginning "Dear Master") written by Emily Dickinson and discovered after her death are the starting point for Brock-Broido's (A Hunger) second collection. The 52 works in this extended tribute echo many of Dickinson's stylistic and formal devices and often exhibit a similar stance toward their subjects. The poems are celebrations of language, often contorting words and syntax into surprising new shapes, at their best (e.g., "The Supernatural Is Only The Natural, Disclosed") playing in the mind like music, with a meaning and beauty that outreach literal comprehension: "I'm listening/ to the fluorescent light come on/ In April, flinging a hot white scarf/ Across a month mottled by the chemicals/ Of eastern standard time." At their weakest, the works are self-consciously literary, overstuffed with allusion and reference. But Brock-Broido is clearly a kindred spirit to the Belle of Amherst, an audacious writer possessed of a grave intensity, as in the prose piece "Haute Couture Vulgarity": "I have too much of the martyr, would set myself ablaze?just for the bright light of the fire, a curiosity, for a cause if I had one, a Flame." This is a brave collection; challenging, sometimes difficult, ambitious and relentless in its experimentation with language and form.Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.