Crazy for Living by Linda Sillitoe (review)

Reviews 171 Aurochs”: ‘There are paintings in which the souls of men are/breaking out of their bodies and rising like steam.” The final section, “Dual,” uses symbols like a strippers’ stage wheel to capture the multiple liveswe all live, and in one poem Mary Douglas is quoted: “It is only by exaggerating the difference . .. between within and without, above and below, male and female, with and against, that a semblance of order is created.” Such an idea is far more effective in a poetic context than as a law of literary theory. This is a rich volume of poetry, handsomely presented by the publishers, better sustained and with a more effective poetic structure than some of the earlier volumes containing many of these poems, a volume worth mining deeply. CHARLES H. DAUGHADAY Murray State University Crazyfor Living. By Linda Sillitoe. (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1993. 64 pages, $10.95.) The question I ponder, as I try to assess poems in Linda Sillitoe’s new collection, Crazyfor Living, relates to genre and voice. In the past I’ve read and reviewed some ofSillitoe’sfiction; I’ve followed her reviews and essays and know a little of herjournalism. Now, with her poetry collection, I see that the voice I have known in prose genres also informs her poetry. The title poem begins with an epigraph from Kyriacos Markides that could have just as appropriately prefaced one ofher stories or essays: “What isLife in reality other than receiving impressions and interpreting them.” My observation is that the journalist’s daily search for news of the world, and even the journalist’s reportorial line, make up Sillitoe’s “voice,” present in both her prose and her poetry. For example, answerwhich ofthe following lines are from her prose fiction and which from her poetry: a rumpled body sprawled on the patch of grass .. . reminded her of an errand . . . but walking oddly as if his knees shake or there is something slippery in his pants The first two lines come from “Pay Day,”a short story from Sillitoe’s Windows on the Sea. The second set, less conventionally poetic, I maintain, comes from her poem “Writing Copy,” in this collection. Even given the general blurring of distinctions between genres, though, I say that Sillitoe’spoetic line isjournalistic, prosaic ifyou will. But I don’t use the term prosaicwith any negative connotation. Prose may, in fact, now potentially be the most poetic of the genres, especially in what is called “creative nonfic­ 172 WesternAmerican Literature tion.” I’d like to see Sillitoe try her hand (her voice) at the literary essay. Her polemic essay on abuse, “Rescue from Home” (Dialogue, 1990), doesn’t realize the possibilities of that subgenre,just as some of her poems in Crazyfor Living fall short of poetic strength because they are sojournalistically bound. But ifshe would allow the merger of poetry and prose within the essay form, I think she would take delight in the possibilities, just as the Moliere character who was amazed to learn he’d been speaking prose all along. Yet there are in this collection these marvelous last lines—pure poetry by anyone’s standards: . . . like dew on a slick leaf in the murmurous night (“November’s End 1979”) . . .where sea answers shore violining melodies pitched between currents of our speech (“Some Nights”) And in the third section of this collection, ‘Journeys Between,” Sillitoe’s voice reaches its best potential, not bound to reportage but informed by it, transcending to the more spiritual and philosophical than quotidienne. This time the eagle came to me. Not to us, drawn by the vortex of our talk, nor to you, planning the ceremony; but to me alone driving just beyond the roadblock men had set. . . driving towards a ceremony behind a roadblock. It rose from the fields as I approached, paused before my windshield like a mirror, swept to the other side, turning slowly as I turned. This happened before—the vision and roadblock— except that second look. As if delays need not end the journey, this time the eagle came to me. Poetry . . . HELEN B. CANNON Utah State University Place-Dream and OtherPoems. By Robert Glen Deamer. (Lewiston...