Books Received

BOOK NOTES inspired to undertake these. I, for one, would propose a reading ofBremer's alphabet poems that is diametrically opposed to Bonn's. The text shows the twenty-six letters ofthe alphabet in twenty-six lines, each ofwhich drops one letter, so that the last line is the simple "a." Instead ofseeing in this reduction a "farewell to God and all that he represents" (25 1), I take it to be the return to the alpha, to language at its beginning, and all its unexplored possibilities. Were I a Freudian, like Bohn, I might even see in the visual aspect ofthe poem a birth canal, or female genitalia. Were I, like Bohn, given to religious interprétations, I might think ofan evocation ofthe presence ofGod, the alpha and omega. It might have been interesting to study the texts ofBonn's choice from a diachronic perspective, comparing and contrasting, for example, in the same chapter, Apollinaire's "Paysage" or "Lettre-Océan" and all those poets who, according to Bohn, borrow their methods from these (Léger, Tablada, Roche). Other suggested analogies would have been interesting to develop, like Bonn's parallel readings of Cangiullo's "Fumatori ?" and Gide's Caves du Vatican (79). I would have liked to see a note about the Lettrists' claim that language freed from meaning, signifiers freed from signifieds, needs no translation, because that claim is so obviously contradicted by Curtay's text quoted by Bohn. The "Rondeau d'après Charles d'Orl éans," which begins, "ogan labéssé son danbo," suggests a pastiche of"Le temps a laissé son manteau" only to those familiar with French phonetics (and culture). Throughout, one regrets, ofcourse, the absence ofcolor reproductions and the poor quality ofsome ofthe black and white photographs. The book would also have benefited from a more complete bibliography, indexing all ofthe poems mentioned in the text and other works by the poets studied. Despite these reservations, Willard Bonn's Modern Visual Poetry is at once fascinating and useful, putting the reader squarely in the center (!) ofvisual poems that will continue to challenge and delight the imagination. Mechthild CranstonClemson University BOOKS RECEIVED Adelman, Gary. Reclaiming D. H. Lawrence: Contemporary Writers Speak Out. Foreword Sandra Gilbert. Lewisburg: Bucknell UP, 2002. Atwood, Margaret. Negotiating with the Dead: A Writer on Writing. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2001. Austenfeld, Thomas Carl. American Women Writers and the Nazis: Ethics and Politics in Boyle, Porter, Stafford, and Hellman. Charlottesville: UP of Virginia, 2001. Barfoot, CC, ed. Aldous Huxley: Between East and West. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2001. Beti, Mongo. 7Ae Story ofthe Madman. Trans. Elizabeth Darnel. Charlottesville: UP of Virginia, 2001. Boitani, Piero. 7Ae Genius to Improve an Invention: Literary Transitions. Notre Dame: U ofNotre Dame P, 2002. Bressler, Charles E. Literary Criticism: An Introduction to Theory and Practice. 3rd ed. Upper Saddle River: Prentice-Hall, 2003. Vol. 27 (2003): 194 THE COMPARATIST Byrd, Rudolph P. and Beverly Guy-Sheftall, eds. Traps: African American Men on Gender and Sexuality. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 2001. Cleary, Joe. Literature, Partition and the Nation State: Culture and Conflict in Ireland, Israel and Palestine. New York: Cambridge UP, 2001. Doan, Laura and Jay Prosser, eds. Palatable Poison: Critical Perspectives on The Well of Loneliness. New York: Columbia UP, 2002. Dobrenko, Evgeny. The Making ofthe State Writer: Social andAesthetic Origins ofSoviet Literary Culture. Stanford: Stanford UP, 2002. Fabian, Johannes. Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes Its Object. New York: Columbia UP, 2002. Farnsworth, Rodney. Mediating Order and Chaos: The Water-Cycle in the Complex Adaptive Systems ofRomantic Culture. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2001. Fenves, Peter. Arresting Language: From Leibniz to Benjamin. Stanford: Stanford UP, 2001. Foster, John Burt, Jr. and Wayne J. Froman, eds. Thresholds ofWestern Culture: Identity, Postcoloniality, Transnationalism. New York/London: Continuum, 2003. Fox, Maria Stadter. 77ie Troubling Play ofGender: The Phaedra Dramas ofTsvetaeva , Yourcenar, and H.D. Cranbury: Susquehanna UP, 2001. Fuchs, Barbara. Mimesis andEmpire: The New World, Islam, andEuropean Identities . Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2001. Gardiner, Judith Kegan. Masculinity Studies andFeminist Theory: New Directions. New York: Columbia UP, 2002. Graham, Colin. Deconstructing Ireland: Identity, Theory, Culture. New York: Columbia UP, 2002. Guha, Ranajit. History at the Limit of World-History. New York: Columbia UP, 2002. Hans...