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PARTISAN REVIEW
journal form; we learn from the inside about her emotional enslavement to
her sister (her "secret self'), of their fascination with arson and their bizarre
"register of deaths of dolls," of their voyeuristic sexual adventures. Their
passionate, wildly ambivalent relationship develops around a deranged par–
ody and defiance of the social world. In "I Wish You Love" the poet again
combines bone and fire, weaving "JosefMegele's skull ascending" and other
grotesques into Dietrich's torch-song "I wish you shelter / from the storm, A
cozy fire to keep you warm." But the poem is not about Mengele or Diet–
rich; they represent antithetical but perversely connected kinds of imagi–
nation. And they are brought into relation with the poet's own sentiments,
her preoccupation with loss, her unwillingness to succumb to sentimentality or
morbidity. The poem recalls Eliot in its juxtaposition of grotesque imagery
("by nightfall, the eels will be floating face up toward Germany") and tawdry
romance ("I'm the kind of girl who calls from baths in old extravagant ho–
tels"). But bleak as the world looks before this unflinching gaze, it is not
abandoned for oblivion. The poem ends in a clear-eyed,if sinister directive:
"Now Dietrich's dead, we turn left here."
The poet draws inspiration from successful souls as well, those of Keats
and Rabelais in particular. "Ten Years Apprenticeship in Fantasy" offers a
state ofluminosity less morbid than that in "I Wish You Love." But "fantasy"
means holding the world back. It does not mean make-believe. This prose–
poem in the form of a letter already assumes the need of an other, an
external anchor, a prose tension in the hermetic world of the spirit. The
poem emphasizes this dialectic and its extremes. The letter is written from an
interiorized space bordered by snowstorms and darkness but still defined in
relation to an external nature and culture it observes and needs. While she
explores the various stages and dimensions of her darkness in the most dis–
passionate voice, a certain terror pulses within it. In one of the few clearly
feminist moments
in
the book, the poet describes
fatal
concavity:
In closing, let me remind you of the Siamese twins separated not long
ago in Canada. They let the little one, the concave half, be girl. With–
out her, he will skip quicker, eat more heartily, raise up his own kind
&
I think he should be given that one good chance. What better reason
to go on living than to repeat yourself autobiographically? She didn't
have that chance you understand.
But the twins do not separate in the speaker. "My Darling C" may be
a lover, but it is surely also an aspect of herself, one she cannot relinquish.
She reminds him to keep up his nourishment and "stay up all night if you
