274
ALICIAOSTRIKER
opening poem, ''The Pigs 'for Circe :in May;" hunger pangs while
call1pmg
in
Yosemite 'lead to: a vision which irtcludes
',,:
Can you' imagine'
those lovely beasts all 'tame prancing around him?
She rna.de a .lot of pigs too. .
. . . J
like pigs. Cute feet, cute nose, and I think
some s.piritual value· investing them. A man and his pig together,
rebalancing"the.·pure tn the'm; under each others arms, bathing,
eating it.
-. .
The penultimate poem is a long pastiche-parody of the
Discourse on
Method,
called "DESCARTES AND THE SPLENDOR OF," done
in a dead-earnest hilarity which resembles nothing in the world but
Tristam Shandy,
and
con~.airiscute
ttloments like:
',.
.
.
.
I realize that to '.doubt is a drag, and
itt
perFECT BEING would accept
everything. But from WHENCE DID· I GET MY IDEA OF
PERFECTION!!!!! PLACED IN MEBYA NATURE, BY A NATURE
IN REALITY MORE PERFECT THAN MINE and WHICH EVEN
POSSESSES WITHINJTSELF ALL THE PERFECTION OF WHICH
rCOULD FORM'ANY'iDEA,that
is
to say, IN A SINGLE WORD,
MOTHER GOD.
.
All
the work in
Places to Go
is experimental. Handling it is like handling
a porcupine traveling at the speed of light, because in addition to her
technical leaping about from one kind of form to another (and favoring
forms with long lines distinguishable from prose only by sheer con–
densation and subtlety of rhythmic play), Kyger typically writes in
3-D
stream of consciousness, letting mythS, memories, wild imagined scena–
rios and shrewd observations all ·surface together. One poem is an ex–
perience of flight, surging above:encouraging
friends~
Another is a vision
of a dying old man. There is a possible
vers~on
of the creation, there
is
a hallucinatory nightmare of the rising moon, ' there is "A NOVEL" in
e5.ghtchapters, eight pages,
tAer~
is a fin,e and funny poem of reminis–
cence called '.'Here,"
with
o~e
passage
si~ult:;lneously
recalling
Alice in
Wond,erland, fortra# of.ehtl,Artist,
GrQucho ¥arx and
a
phrase perhaps
stolen'
f~m
Sir
ThOPlas
Wy~tt:
..
A
red setter cWne' into the 'kitchen and ate half
the turkey in ' the oven., !Jefore I got locked up. I shit in
a pail. Take out the 'clothespins first: The cat did similarly
just .like
it
ZJ?llS-
born to, .qn.
.new~papers
in the garage. After
that I went :into training, developing artistic talents
