Word: spivack
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Here her alliteration works, subtly drawing the passage together without bombarding the reader with useless repetition. The imagery is strong and suggestive, but not full of the mixed metaphor which detracts in so many of her other pieces. She gives a credible child's insight into an adult world. Spivack writes best when she refrains from being overtly cosmic...
EXCLAMATION points and oozing over-statement fill the entire collection. "howling,/hooding the head against horror. Human!" Her lines abound with histrionics, "oh brain, too much marked cave!" Attempting to be unconventional, Spivack occasionally borrows from e.e. cummings--with disastrous results. Bordering on sentimentality, she often omits capital letters in a consciously precious...
...Spivack's use of formal rhyme produces childish, stilted versification. Her form does not strengthen the poem, but remains glaringly obvious, never blending into the total fabric of the work. She rhymes only to prove she can rhyme...
...objective reading of the book. Her lines don't flow smoothly and lump together like coagulated oatmeal. "Five seagulls, circumflex accents, drift by." She displays a penchant for using formalistic inversions which add nothing but stiffness to the line: "that five-petaled sun/folds all its fruited segments out..." Spivack tends to generalize about the whole human race, instead of speaking from her own personal experience and leaving it at that...
...subject matter is diverse, ranging from cripples and toads to sex and lobotomy. But the collection as a whole has no particular coherence, no central voice or theme which roots it all together. The poems remain solitary and unwieldy. Spivack's awkward effort ultimately fails due to a lack of cohesive, unifying philosophy. This book tries to fly inland to the "highways" of the mind. Unfortunately, it does all that and more--and succeeds beautifully at winging rapidly downhill...