'But angels, burns are totally worth the pleasure of giving a light At least, when I am not a monster, withīoobs and mouth and fingers.' The same poem ends with a promise: Augustine are pitted against the more carnal poet: 'This is Well-/ I'd probably just want to have sex with it.' AngelsĪnd St. A sacristan claims, 'Even if I believed the Word became flesh, Often this trouble is grounded in sexualĭeviancy, with any idea of purity stripped down to its socks and laughedĪt. This is a book of freaks-those types who timidly yet Sappho's only existing complete poem with balsamic vinaigrette. You must change your life.Īnother character (it is hard not to call them characters) sprays Like a lamp, in which his gaze, now turned to low, Is still suffused with brilliance from inside, Thing, and I'll say it for you here now but I'll hurry it up He got out his megaphone and said the whole poem, the whole Modern-era Pietas, including one that features 'the Virgin mourningĬhrist as a miscarriage.' Nothing is off limits to Dennigan-sheĮven does that unholy, unforgiveable thing of mocking Rilke. School Reunion.' In a later poem, the speaker describes a series of Imagine sex and have my own Jesus,' she writes in 'Catholic Genius because he believes that aliens built the pyramids.ĭennigan's characters have the problem of being loquacious when

Nuclear holocaust, and the girlfriend who thinks her boyfriend is a

There is the former church employee guilty ofĭrinking holy water and eating communion wafers at work, the head nurseĪt Bethany Home Hospice who attempts to shield her patients from a Good-intentioned yet wacked-out narrator, eager to give you a tour of Madame X begins with birth and ends with a funeral in betweenĪre poems of drought, apocalypse, and terrorism. Only wonder why she changed her mind, but we should be thankful she did.ĭennigan does best what most poets do not dare.

And this has mostly met with not much success.' One can Utterance the kind of finality a period would, instead of a lot of I have been using ellipses in poems-instead of lineīreaks, instead of finishing thoughts, instead of giving any complete FromĪn interview with West Branch: 'But to speak specifically of myįailures: ellipses. Interestingly, this is punctuation the poet once thought to avoid. Stanzas nor line breaks but ellipses-punctuation that underscoresĭarcie Dennigan's already breathless and skittish voice. Words are dramatically built up toĪnd then omitted poems arrive in clumsy blocks, broken by neither Madame X is a sprawling book written by a poet with a palate for 2013 University of Nebraska Press 24 May.

Madame X by Darcie Dennigan