Carnegie Mellon University Books

"Letter from Swan's Island" stands out as the brilliant poem of this collection. It has audacity-- that is, the narrator seems confident in an idiosyncratic presentation of life. The grand poem behind this poem is Marianne Moore's "The Steeple Jack."

Consider:

"It could not be dangerous to be living /
in a town like this, of simple people,/
who have a steeple-jack placing danger-signs by the church /
while he is gilding the solid- /
pointed star, which on a steeple /

stands for hope." (Moore "The Steeple Jack).

then:

"... Is evil possible here /where everyone lives so individually / and nature appears to be neutral / toward everything but itself?" (Spires "Letter...").

You see how these narrators consider landscapes similarly-- thinking about the possibilities of life in relation to nature and the nature of people living in the area. "[danger]" and "evil" are responded to similarly.

The language of Elizabeth Spires' collection maintains a laconic quality that gives it an air of elegance. A lot of times, this allows reading to move on smoothly-- like you were reading a Frost poem. But this collection's sensibility is different from Frost's. "Crazy Quilt" is a strong poem. It is a remembrance of childhood where "mother" and "father" are like (presumably)"sun" and "moon" ("at odds with one another," or like "dog" and "calico cat"). The narrator finds "unreasoning," remembering childhood; it is like the title "Crazy Quilt"-- that is the conceit here. To find the mother, particularly, in the quilt is the quest of this questing poet. In this sense, it becomes a sort of ars poetika about mother poets in relation to the successors.

Overall, the collection becomes worthy if you do some close readings. Nonetheless, the read is enjoyable, the voice original. It is not a pretentious poet here. This makes me want to get her new book when it comes out in September 2002.

Oh, come now, Sam. You ARE the author of this book. Relax. Even Homer nodded.

As another reviewer stated, sort of a blend of The Postman Always Rings Twice/Double Indemnity type story - hero immediately falls in love with and wants to marry murderous woman. Does her bidding, regrets it, ridiculous ending. I mean, do people really abandon their moral code that quickly and easily? I don't believe so, therefore the whole premise seemed outlandish.

This 'Magician's Wife' is not Moore's story set in France/Europe. It is, instead, a story of lust, adultery, and wish fulfillment set 1940's Virginia.

A master of American noir, Cain spins a suspense-filled that reminds you to be careful what you wish for.

The Magician's Wife is a mediocre rendition of some of Cain's classic novels such as The Postman Always Rings Twice and Double Indemnity. Although it starts off slowly, it does build up a head of steam and if you ignore some of the unbelievable actions of the protagonist, the charismatic meat-magnate, Clay Lockwood, it is a hard book to put down. More or less the plot is a fellow (this time a successful executive) has an affair with a married woman and after much arm-twisting chooses to help her murder her husband for money. The magician's wife is clearly not someone worth murdering for and at the same time Clay carries on an affair with her mother, Grace, which is one of the absurd elements of this novel. Like a magician, Cain works out interesting plot twists around these incongruencies and somehow makes it a compelling read. Nonetheless he is not in great form, for a key scene where Clay scopes out the magician whom he is plotting to kill and sees him performing tricks for some kids in his neighborhood would by Cain's standards be rendered in grand fashion as the potential killer feels remorse and anguish in discovering that his victim is a regular and decent guy. Somehow in The Magician's Wife this scene is barely sketched out leaving out, so to speak, The Mark of Cain.

I was looking forward to reading this new book by Kizer, but what a disappointment. Page after page is hopelessly ordinary. Nothing stands out as especially arresting or original. Her early work had vitality and subtlety which, in this book, has been replaced by surprisingly stale language and a tone of self-satisfaction.

The world of money and the money makers around 1990.
The author correctly states that money has become a new religion: Today it is the bank manager rather than the priests who are the guardians of people's secrets and confessionals, who see the world (as they say) 'with their trousers down'.
But the investigation is too superficial.
The only point the author really scores is his observation that we have seen the end of Veblen's leisure class: 'Work, which has so long been associated with drudgery, is now essential to importance and status ... the orders of time have been reversed: the rich will rise at dawn, the poor sleep late'.
A waste of time.