Midwives (review)

That sense of "something just beyond" our understanding is always at the forefront of these stories. Admirers of Bass's lyricism and his emotionaUy charged tales of quirky romantics wUl not be disappointed by his latest work. (PJ) Desire by Frank Bidart Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1997, 61 pp., $20 Frank Bidart begins Desire by invoking Plotinus, the thirdcentury Neoplatonist who articulated the ethereal concept of Intellectual Beauty. 'To Plotinus what we seek is VISION, what/ wakes when we wake to desire," he writes, apparently looking beyond the physical world to the airy realms of aesthetics or philosophy. The poem's startling turn, two couplets later, will seem oddly familiar to readers of Bidarfs earlier work: "But once you have seen a hand cut off, or/a foot, or a head, you have embarked, have begun." These two extremes, the radiant and the violent, are the hammer and anvil with which Bidart forges his poems. Some of the more striking lyric poems, which constitute the first half of the book, are made beautiful by the loss they describe. They are deeply elegiac in a variety of ways. Some are traditional elegies— a gentle message to a dead loved one, for instance—while others address unexpected, even shocking, subjects: a Roman army routed, a torture fantasy. Bidarfs frequent use of refrains, complex diction and variations of works by Catullus, Tacitus, and Dante give his work a decidedly classical feel, despite the idiosyncrasies of punctuation and lineation that characterize his poems visually. The second half of Desire features the long poem, "The Second Hour of the Night," a narrative montage that dovetails Beriioz's memoirs and Ovid's account of the King of Cyprus and his daughter. In previous long poems Bidart has effectively represented Nijinsky and CaUas among others, and this effort is likewise successful. The length aUows him to thoroughly explore his subjects in a way sympathetic to his skills as a psychological dramatist. The result is sometimes luscious, at other times terrifying, and haunted throughout—what one might expect in a tale about "blighted lives blighted in the service of Venus." (BF) Midwives by Chris Bohjalian Harmony Books, 1997, 312 pp. $24 Chris Bohjalian's fifth novel is the gripping story of Connie Danforth, a teenager whose mother, Sibyl, is accused of manslaughter. In a small town in Vermont, Sibyl Danforth is a weU-respected but uncertified midwife. On the night of an immobilizing ice storm, she attends a minister's wife's Ul-fated labor and delivery. After the woman appears to have died from a stroke, she performs an emergency C-section with a knife, to save the baby. From this point on, Connie recoUects the aftermath of the tragedy The Missouri Review · 177 and the town's response to her mother's deed. Sibyl's birthing assistant tells police that blood spurted from the incisions made in the "dead" woman's flesh, indicating that she was alive. Meanwhile, local doctors feel obligated to warn the public of the inherent dangers connected with home births. During the subsequent trial, it is revealed that the dead woman was anemic, and the prosecution makes a strong case that Sibyl behaved irresponsibly in failing to recommend a hospital birth. As further light is shed upon the situation by both sides, the issue becomes increasingly perplexing. We continue to sympathize with the Danforths, but grow uncertain as to how justice should best be served. Indeed, the strength of the novel lies in Bohjalian's ability to evenly balance the multiple truths that emerge within passionate human conflicts. Most of the novel's big questions, both moral and factual , remain unanswered. Bohjalian couples this exploration of a controversial issue with keen narrative skills that make Midwives an exciting read. (MM) Boyhood: Scenes From a Provincial Life by J.M. Coetzee Viking, 1997, 208 pp., $22.95 In his fourth work of nonfiction, the distinguished South African novelist has put his own life under the microscope. Coetzee's previous works include the acclaimed Waiting for the Barbarians and The Life and Times ofMichael K, for which he won the Booker Prize. His writings are characteristically dark, and his characters suffer from the nightmarish political...