Fierce Geometry
Brancaccio, Mary
Unquenchable longings pulsate through Brancaccio's version of a book of the dead. A recurring character-voice the poet trusts as "ghost girl" peels off and records layers upon layers of brutal human geometries. Circles and cells, "mausoleum[s] to empire, " "breast/of resentment, " lost vowels, all signal shapes a world possesses. I hear Lessing and Rich, Clifton and Sexton, accompanying Brancaccio as she explodes both the myths and the realiti...