Synopsis
Book by Fenza, D. W.
Reviews
Readers who enjoy traditional verse will delight in this book-length poem, a highly concentrated farce. A modern lawyer, "whom we shall leave / unnamed," stumbles through the ruins of his marriage, failed affairs, unemployment and atheism; attempts to cheat the system backfire. This anti-hero is as utterly bemused by contemporary America as if he had somehow been transplanted from another age. His "twice-fallen patron saint" is Archimedes, the Greek mathematician and inventor who, when the Romans invaded, "went home / to take a bath and sulk, to formulate, / in simple algebra, how a heavy crown / displaces the self." Fenza roots the philosophical meditations of his first book in picturesque imagery: "It's good to be the king--when the world, if she desires your attention, must come / to you. One king was so impressed with his / hefty serving of beef that he knighted it; / but as rush hour began, our leading man / drank cheap gin for dinner, blinking / and blanking out on a wobbly kitchen chair." Recurrent topics, such as suicide, various angels with their fallible attributes and Archimedes, and intimate letters to "X" unite the numbered sections here, but most images are topical and fleeting, enhancing the comic voice.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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