Dailies & Rushes

February 15, 1999
Like prints rushed to the screening room, the poems of Kinsolving's debut hit simultaneous notes of specificity and vagueness, as if the rest of the story remains to be shot. In a familiar, no longer New York School blend of the quotidian and the quixotic, she takes on international politics, the violent death of a relative and the classic urgency of losing and finding love; and yet it is the occasional searing private moment, and not the thematic scope, that makes many of these poems shine. The best, like "The Jellyfish" or "The Night Nurse," strike to the heart of an ironic or Plath-like conundrum: "`These are your numbers,' she soothes. `You must/ not refuse. The hospital provides them free/ of charge and we can insert them without leaving/ scars.'" Often it is the half-buried pun that satisfies here rather than her more overt word-play, and similarly, the poems frequently end with a ponderous last line that sometimes works, and sometimes comes off belabored: "I hear/ the closing door as it has never closed before." Kinsolving's tone can indeed be lofty, speaking of death as "the great weight of being," and the frequent repetitions are often ineffective, coming off more as unwieldly struggles than as artifice. But in her impressively stylized constructions and "more than meets the eye" depths (well explored in Richard Howard's rapt introduction) there remains a mutable, complex imagery ("The sick float past their bloodsteams into an evening of smooth lakes") giving even the more uneven pieces an ambivalent appeal.

April 15, 2000
Every year, dozens of first books of poetry are published, some unremarkable, some surprisingly good, but just a few truly memorable. Kinsolving's first effort (save a collaboration with artist Susan Colgan) is such a book. How refreshing to encounter a poet who cannot be so easily defined, who moves from "a stick,/ wandering over snowdrifts/ cheerful and unassuming/ A Chaplin cane without Charlie" to a poem about a psychopath who counts the poet's uncle among his victims and ends thus: "amid the daily news/ of armies, viruses, and madmen, I act casual,/ fearing that my children are my prayers." Rather elegant, often ironic, and yet never offhand, these poems deliver their assessment in lucid and polished lines.

Copyright 2000 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.