The Creation Frame

"She stands outside all the prevailing modes ....She writes a very personal and revealing poem which is redeemed from narcissism by the craft, the rich, dense, textured lines, the pure love of language and the things it evokes (as well as feelings) and by the way she makes herself not a mirror but a lens in which the heat and light of her experience-very feminine of its type, joyous and painful-is drawn to a focus and catches fire on the page." --Ralph J. Mills, Jr.

"She has been slowly and consistently developing a powerful and original vision....The Creation Frame is truly an
unforgettable book, pervaded with a personal dynamism." --Laurence Lieberman

The Creation Frame
Univ. of Illinois Press, 83 pages. (Out of Print: Price and Availability vary)
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This fourth volume in the Illinois Series is composed of three sections, introduced by the first, and title, poem, which treats of the
relationship between language and being, through the metaphor of the creation of Eve as depicted in Genesis and in Ghiberti's bronze door. By the time this book appears, the author has been widely published in literary journals. She continues to address the same questions, but with greater simplicity and greater sophistication. .

Excerpt from: The Creation Frame

Daphne

Winter: hoarse, oracular.
The rain stings, suicidally bitter, like desire.
Why must my legs be bare
All the way up my thighs, cold,
And my soles wet.

Stench of soft bark.
On my fingers the scent of laurel crushed
Freshens, but it does not heal
The darkness in the mind's
Pith.

How did the summer fail?
He placed mouth
Upon my ear.
His warm breath
Moistened my hair.
I heard a god exhale.

But now the haggard wind circling my head
Rasps in burned redwood.
Plagues spring in his stride.
Am I raving? I felt healed.
The heavy wind that breathes in these soaked trees
Rattles through me. I'm cold.
I think I have eaten with the dead.
I'm cold.
Wrenched against his intelligent body
I have seen bay branches with his eyes.

They are stripped. They are wet.
They shiver a little, stiffly.
They do not grow very high.
They are darker than all the green around them.
The leaves have tiny waves on the edges like
A smile of wind.
A god might mark them, quiet them,
Move in what is open
Of these laurel leaves.
Most tenderly.