Corporal Works

This first book, chosen by Stephen Dobyns for the Four Way Books Intro Series in Poetry, chronicles a Dantesque journey. Over the course of the poems, the poet/narrator poses variously as Charon, Virgil, and Dante – visitor to the region where the dead and tormented lament. The quest here, too, is for a transformative love. In Domina’s world, ‘Only the woman with the oars / is real and she is the only one / who recognizes the other figures / and sees through them;’ thus only she is capable of re-imagining herself – the others are all sentenced to eternal grief. These poems, mythic in their reach, are appropriately characterized by a shadowy sense of mystery and a persuasive tone of objectivity. The one shortcoming is an over-reliance on the word grief, as if any single word can encompass all life’s losses and disappointments.
–The Boston Review