TO TELL THE LAMP
Lisa M. Lubasch, . . Avec, $14 (115pp) ISBN 978-1-880713-33-4
When is seeing believing? Is knowing only recording? What "patterns of saying/ Produce misgivings in us," and when are "existing and desiring not the same thing"? These and other weightily abstract questions take center stage in Lubasch's thoughtful third collection. Opening with an extended Gertrude Stein-ish discourse ("Certainly sheltering being is an applaudable thing"), the New York–based Lubasch diversifies her meditations into four sets of shorter poems indebted in spots to George Oppen; a concluding ode, positioning phrases all over the visual page, echoes more recent visual and verbal patternings. The whole collection, however, pivots on Lubasch's use of gerunds ("This pattern of listening/ To the imagined desire/ Is what we call living"), and keeps its focus tightly on the mechanisms of perception and consciousness, "the condition of its intensity." Lubasch (
Reviewed on: 05/24/2004
Genre: Nonfiction