( 2 reviews )
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( 3 of 5 found this review helpful ) Posted: Oct 20 2005
Mark's book never settles, like the stories of Beckett. Her language is continually undermining itself, knocking askew the reader's center of gravity. There is no level to be found. But she knows that the people want to hear a story like we used to hear - and she gives us that. In the tradition of Donald Barthelme and James Tate, The Babies proves that poetry isn't easy, but it can be written to horrify and entertain every one of us.
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( 6 of 12 found this review helpful ) Posted: Jan 24 2005
Mark creates space by creating borders--what is beyond moves closer, and what is close moves far away. Each poem in "The Babies" is new language; each is an utterance that is somehow finished exactly at the moment of its conception, so that the reader feels as though there is no other way to say what has been said. The poems are inevitable; they are crystalized; they are fierce and soft.
