Dark Would (the missing person): Poems

by Liz Waldner

A philosophical, tough, and often funny inquiry into twenty-first-century selfhood, Liz Waldner's new collection of poems takes shape in the shadow of Dante's "dark wood." Dark Would (the missing person) is quirky. It's audaciously American, out of the Dickinson house. Waldner uses short, quick syntactical units that swerve rather than build up an architecture of ideas through sequential juxtaposition. She also has, like Dickinson, a canny, carnal, specifying diction. Her poems are sonorous, sly, and sexy. They are political in their address of gender through reference to pop songs, poems, and analyses of personal experiences. The resulting wry permutations of will and desire alternately leaf and hew an American "dark wood." The pages and paths turn to and through the kinds of lostness and foundness to which rootlessness gives rise.

Genres: Poetry

112 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2002

Reviews

[Nancy]

Like reading the stories of a person who invented their own language. You are startled you can understand, and it makes you feel as if you might have written this. I love how we feel the words in our mouths. (These poems for words, about words, of words and how they get said.)

[Liza]

I read these poems because Stephen Burt gave them a positive review. How you feel about them would probably have a lot to do with how you feel about puns. Personally, I like them pretty well. A charming book.