A HOT JANUARY

Best known for her radical-feminist polemics, and for editing the seminal Sisterhood Is Powerful, Morgan (The Word of a Woman, 1992, etc.) returns to poetry after a long hiatus, breaking her silence —to parry— rejection by her lover of 15 years. They—re mostly poems of —a woman run mad— in the traditional confessional vein, with many professions of suffering, pain, anger, and survival. With her tough and unexpected rhymes, and her mostly rhetoric-free intensity, Morgan offers a surprising number of superb poems. The title piece mourns a lost love, mocks herself, finds consolation in life’s demands, and (most unexpectedly) reconsiders her feminist notions of how women treat one another. The excellent —The Butcher’s Daughter— plays on the terms of the meat cutter’s craft in describing an affair. —Small Talk Blues— captures the shorthand communication between two former lovers. And in two fine poems about art (—Col Tempo— and —Cave Dwellers—), Morgan redefines herself in a Renaissance portrait, and experiences joy in wonder, respectively. A handful of poems chart her survival: the sonnet —Poeme Noir— restates a season in —hell— and describes her —madness— (unfortunately) as —bittersweet brain candy.—Others are full of typical self-help bromides. The knee-jerk politics throughout the volume—at its worst when Morgan identifies with American Indian women, or a black man tortured by whites’shouldn—t prevent readers from discovering her red-hot verse. Poems that are alive to language and burning with passion.