Red to the Rind

June 1, 2002
Eating Club In the nearly 60 short lyrics of Red to the Rind, Stan Rice's seventh collection, the poet's New Orleans summons vibrant descriptive panache: "The great Sugar kettles are brimful of beer and ice. The melt-water has turned the yard into dung. A gangplank of plastic grass Leads us over the muck." The book concludes with two long poems, "The Underworld" and "Dismemberments," which string together short "linked epiphanies" into a kind of Dantesque nightmare where Rice's speaker finds himself playing cards while "sitting in `Hitler's Bed' Like a cherry on an eclair With messed-up hair," and then popping out for a Viennese coffee and "The most delicious pastry I have ever tasted and the contradiction Between Deliciousness and Discipline, well The thought nearly makes breast-milk Come out of my penis."