Oneiromance

Kathleen Rooney

Switchback Books, 2008

$14

Kathleen Rooney's Oneiromance echoes Lincoln's sentiment of Niagra Falls -- "Never dried, never froze, never slept, never rested --" It is an epithalamion full of life and movement, enjoyable niblets -- "nunfits," "Bluestocking scholars" -- and enjoyable lines -- "We wish on a fishbone, though fish don't / have wishdones ..." "The room & his trusty sidekick the groom," "Lawn mowers / moan like the ghosts of generals./ Cicadas drone like the ghosts of American-/made cars," "Legends ionize the air," and "Rosa rugosa creeps from the pergola / to the groom's throat." [Evan Fleischer]

Cancer Mon Amour

Kathrin Schaeppi

Winterling Press/Dusie Chap Kollektiv, 2009

All gasp and tension, any moment something could happen. Something bad. To be “scaaared” - oh soscared. Cancer Mon Amour moves like its cover image says it will: “REPEAT” “STOP”. Back into treatment. Memory. Remembering Mother’s treatment. Inescapable mortality. Is there “any god in this”? These pulsing prose poems of helping a friend through illness - of “volatile amour” - are urgent in their telling. i love i love i love notarikons punctuate the chap as abbreviations of our complicated relationships with our own humanness and with each other. With much love, Schaeppi has used her words to “sew pearls onto branches.” [Cara Benson]