The Public Mirror

Katrovas, Richard

ISBN 10: 0819511706 / ISBN 13: 9780819511706

Published by Wesleyan Univ Pr, 1990

About this Item

Seller Inventory # 330781

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Public Mirror
• Publisher: Wesleyan Univ Pr
• Publication Date: 1990
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0819511706
• ISBN 13: 9780819511706
• Binding: Trade Paperback
• Condition: Fine
• Seller catalogs:
  • Poetry

About this title

Synopsis

“Wit, verve, energy, and common intelligence mark the poems of The Public Mirror as truly distinctive. But what makes them necessary is the heartbeat in the shadows, the steam of daily things. This poet, as they say in the South, is doing business—and it is a rare, sometimes raw pleasure to watch him. Katrovas is real! - Dave Smith “Katrovas has turned the mirror away from himself to take in an urban world both brutal and beautiful. He manages the clear-eyed, unsentimental gaze of the most vigilant modernist, yet one hears the heart pulsing in every word.“ —Bonnie Costello

Reviews

Katrovas's ( Snug Harbor ) characteristic tautness of language and lyrical intensity slacken here, but his singular voice and unvarnished vision remain constant and convincing. Once again, the streets of New Orleans--where to live "is to reconsider, / daily . . . / the crumbling communities of dead / the holiness of closure"--provide a fitting backdrop for the poet's concerns, the ghosts of his own past as well as the city's nocturnal figures: waiters in gaudy dives; a "brilliant, illiterate neighbor, / who seems never to sleep,"; and drag queens "who mope from bars . . . / to greet with clicking heels the light that saddens them." It is in the "horror / of the light," the poet suggests, that we see ourselves for who we really are, as in the title poem where he remembers himself as a child "before the public mirror . . . / a hair more than nothing, / whom I could destroy simply by closing my eyes." In the ideal life, says Katrovas, "there are no mirrors," and perhaps there should be fewer in these poems--the repetitive, forced mirror imagery undermines the book's edge and urgency.
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