From Publishers Weekly
Lau ( Oedipal Dreams ), a Governor General's Award nominee, bows in here with a slim and anti-climactic gathering of poetry and prose poems. Many droop with ennui. "Take it off, take it all off / wipe the tears that slide glass over your eyes," advises the speaker in "Pressure," as she stands over her gartered and leather-bound sexual prey. In "Nothing is Happening," a similar narrator announces, "In the mirror I do not notice my red lips like an open wound, my / statue-white face or the elegance of my whip twirling in the air." The tired, bored dominatrix--a good idea. But not when language is tired, also, as is too often the case with Lau here. She writes with an apparent aversion to emotion and with a lack of irony that can dull. Strangely, in pieces that frequently suggest sexual violence and despair, some basic force is missing; and pleasure is out the door. Plainly, Lau is capable of better: "I, a girl buttoned in black, supported on chunky heels, / with a face like a purse: the eyes open clasps, / the cheeks willing to yield to the stuffing of a tongue / and more."
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
