The Enchanted Room

by Maurya Simon

Overview

This remarkable debut is a cohesive yet wide-ranging suite that displays a finely tuned sense of craft and a mind alert not only to the present but to the possible, to many traditions, and a deeply felt sense of history. Yet, for all Simon's diverse themes and structures, the poet remains rooted in this world-accessible, clear, and vibrant.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780914742982
Publisher:	Copper Canyon Press
Publication date:	10/01/1986
Pages:	96
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.50(d)

Editorial Reviews

Simon's poems are sometimes public, addressing Rimbaud, the Sibyl, and even the Messiah. More often she stays in the realm of the personal, documenting the ``open wound'' with stunning imagery as she offers up lamentations for missing wives or parents or Indian deities: ``I've inherited from my mother/ a curious need for Sabbath candles/ though they go unlit.'' In one of the more satisfying poems Simon translates numbers into a bestiary; 10 is ``the one who married one.'' Many of these poems are conversations the poet is having with herself, and one occasionally longs for greater music, for insight into what is beyond such sentiments as ``Sometime we find that/ while we're gone our children/ fall into decline.'' These poems highlight the poet's sensitivity, but the reader may wish they had more life of their own. Rosaly DeMaios Roffman, English Dept., Indiana Univ. of Pennsylvania

Library Journal