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Playfully invading the traditional territories of poetry, Sally
Van Doren throws into question form, subject matter, and the sound
and meaning of words. The poems in Sex at Noon Taxes mix
straightforward narrative, midwestern vernacular, and linguistic
ambivalence, embedded in which is a struggle between the mind and
the body. While one poem admonishes the reader to "Forget the phonics
/ of the focal/fecal. Phrase, / fashion, and effuse," in another
the speaker says, "I refine my sense of / pain when you touch me
/ with something blue." A preoccupation with the visual, artists,
and artwork seeps through many of these imagistic minitexts.
These poems look for release in descriptions of physical acts and
in intricate manipulations of language. Sometimes they find it:
"Along comes the sentence to / break up the monotony of possession."
More often, though, the questions they pose resist answers: "What
extravagant / commodity is sex?" and "Which el- / lipsis omits love?"
Gender identification blurs as the poems probe theories of articulation
and investigate the geographies of language and love. Through wordplay
and word work, these poems travel a tightly crafted sphere of emotions
and ideas.
"Preposition"
The before took us right up to
the after, even though under
meant we should not try over,
from being stronger than to,
up shying from its ascent
in the face of down. I held
on to you and beside you
I became with and about.
In our around, the near/far
could turn away and toward,
within the without. By my above
and your below, the wheres and
whens retreated, leaving time
and space stranded, in off, on out.
Sally Van Doren teaches creative writing in the
St. Louis, Missouri, public schools and curates poetry workshops
for the St. Louis Poetry Center. Her poems have appeared in Barrow
Street, Boulevard, Cincinnati Review, Colorado Review, LIT, Margie,
Parthenon West Review, and Poetry Daily.
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