TENDERNESS SHORE

Through a blizzard of allusions and references pushed by juxtaposition, interruption and discontinuity, Striker aims to reproduce the fragmented address of Sappho's lyrics. The first section, "sappho's sparrows," begins: "I am walking straight toward you, listening./ Dry grass and American words are all I have to reach you." The visual style of the collection is eclectic: Stricker uses a variety of fonts, forms, punctuations, as well as photographs and hand-drawn ideograms. Although well-designed, the language and themes used rarely stray into the unexpected: lines such as "The body is a woman, her spirit is a body, is beloved, like the olive" point to deeply traditional tropes that here sound sentimental. A long, alphabetically arranged prose poem makes up the mid-section of the book, aiming at a lexicon of Sappho's world: literature is defined as "Water's motion/ written deeply into its form/ perfect unreadable sentences." A third long poem interconnects the personal with a host of allusions to Albert Camus: "It was the book I fell in love with as much as Camus." Striker concludes with a piece that finds "I am convinced that it is not so much a matter/ of her survival in these fragments which is at stake/ but our own." That may be so, but the language for it will need further elaboration. (May)