Aleatory Allegories

If allegory gets pegged as a premodern trope and chance is the hallmark of postmodernism, then Schultz is interested in their collision is it plays out in the moral, natural and spiritual worlds of Hawaii. Writing from an academic post at the University of Hawaii that comes with a prerequisite set of complications--""I the haole teacher,/ and you, you the angry indigene,/ the usual set of wigged/ roles""--Schultz breaks her debut into five sections, a chaotic ride through a series of material and linguistic transformations. Part one begins with the wryly recovered ""Mothers and Dinosaurs, Inc"" (""I'll confess a need for origins"") and moves through ""Oceanic Feeling,"" ""Earthquake Dreams,"" ""Ad Agency Gossip,"" Gandhi's nonviolent philosophy of ""Satyagraha"" (as musically rendered by Philip Glass), a ""Flack Jacket Ode"" and ""Major Funding for Despair."" The rapid-fire shifts here are tonally very New York School, while their socioeconomic stabs at theorization reflect language poetry's salvos; Schultz's speaker meets god at Pizza Hut and sees Antigone walk with Gilligan, but will discuss public policy at the drop of a tinfoil hat: ""I'm not normal; I'm paranormal,/ immune to realism's false modesty/ and plain; am inhibited by palms.../ collective banyans upheld/ by their roots."" Salt is an Australian publisher linked to a journal of the same name; both are edited by poet John Kinsella (Visitants, etc.). Schultz, who edited The Tribe of John: Ashbery and Contemporary Poetry and continues to edit Tinfish, a little magazine with a strong following, is bound to reach beyond the Pacific with this remarkable and necessary set of investigations. (Feb.)