Word: poem
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...this one on the shelf with The Natural. But leave room for poet Donald Hall, who has written a book-length poem, called The Museum of Clear Ideas, strung on the nine-inning frame of a baseball game. Nine syllable lines, nine lines to a half inning, and so on. Extra innings as the poet reaches the end and finds himself still breathing easily despite intimations of mortality...
...Wilmot town hall, a couple of miles from his farm, Hall recently read from his gigantic baseball poem. "I would like to linger with Schwitters in the Fenway bleachers, explaining baseball . . . Well, there are nine players . . ." That's Kurt Schwitters, the defunct German Dadaist, Hall explained somewhat obscurely. Fenway needs no explanation; it is the ball park of tragedy where the Red Sox writhe...
Images of other blood connections between women, especially that between sisters, appear regularly in the pieces; together, the works produce an overall sense of "woman power". With titles like "A Poem for a Woman in Rage" (one of the new poems), "For My Singing Sister" "Relevant is Different Points on the Circle", "Black Mother Woman" and "The Woman Thing," Lorde's pieces serve as fiery social commentary...
Despite the phrases which teach, even instruct, and despite the powerful anger these poems convey, their most striking element is love. Almost every poem ends with a phrase describing a healing, embattled love: "but the night was dark/ and love was a burning fence/ about my house," she writes at the end of "Gemini." "Quiet love hangs/ in the door of my house/ a sheet of brick-caught silk/ rent in the sun" concludes "Echo", also written in the 1950s. But "Dreams Bite", written in 1968, ends "I shall love/ again/ when I am obsolete...
...Black woman-mother, the perseverance of love; these concerns unify Undersong so that it can be read straight through as one whole, as a testament to a life's work and the wisdom and experience necessary to be able to alter that work slightly. As Lorde writes in her poem "Conclusion", "I believe in love as I believe in our children/ but I was born Black and without illusion/ and my vision/ which differs from yours/ is clear/ although sometimes restricted...