The Glory of Love

American IGViBw" Bar-Nadav continuedfromprevious page ¦ Bang's humorous use of condiments reminds her readers to laugh while the unsatisfied speakerpursues other aesthetic discourses. In "This Is HowYou Sit Correctiy (AfterGoya)," the speaker queries the internal motivations of her readers: How do you feel right now? Where are you getting your information? Do you have a belief system? How much fear did you experience today? I was shaking in my boots. . .. In this model, Bang calls attention to the highly unique and heavily loaded sensory filters through which individuals (mis)interpret art and "invent allegories // for private mythologies." An example ofthis can be seen in the poem "Max Ernst and Dorothea Tanning," where the speaker contemplates a figure in a photograph and states: "I imagine // he loves me, so he loves me." In effect, the speaker revises the image to suit her whims and desires. Unsatisfied with the aforementioned aesthetic models, which either nullify feeling or nullify the actual artwork, the speaker struggles to devise a cohesive aesthetic theory, knowing that such a theory is problematic. Overwhelmed by "multiple versions" and "unsolved portions," the speaker concludes that "the theory is not without mishap." In a surreal turn, theory itselfcomes to life to console the speaker and reader: "the theory says / it could always be worse." Eventually , imaginary characters within the poem refuse to participate in the making of the theory: "MY, what little SENSE you make, said the wolf / to Mary Jo." This crisis of coherence reaches anthropomorphic heights in "Three Parts of an X," where the speaker directly addresses a Robert Gober sculpture: Of course I'm afraid you won't understand. You, a great artificial monster. Me, a state of nature. Teetering on a precipice ofhopelessness, the speaker confronts the possibility that people and art are incomprehensible to each other. The speaker nevertheless assures herself that a work of art is worthy of consideration even if the artist's intentions can never truly be captured or clearly communicated to a viewer whose vision, to some degree, is distorted. "What harm is there in art," the speaker coyly asks. "As long as an image can never bed / the object it represents. / Sex with an effigy." Bang suggests that those who accept that art is non-representational and subjective are free to guiltlessly revel in their own sordid fantasies. True to the cubist articulation of intersecting picture planes, the speaker in "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon" describes a story made of fragments that shatter "one-point perspective." Rejecting the notion of absolute truth in favor of multiple readings , the speaker claims: "AU about is a field // of permission, ofvision. ..." Bang ultimately dismantles the notion of a fixed aesthetic theory in celebration of multiplicity and individual response. Romantic, visionary, and endlessly surprising, The Eye Like a Strange Balloon invites readers to cross conventional boundaries, turn up our imaginative frequencies, and viscerally engage with art, for it is there that we can discover a host of dazzling possibilities. Hadara Bar-Nadav 's recent publications appear or are forthcoming in Beloit Poetry Journal, Chelsea , Indiana Review, The Journal, Quarterly West, Shenandoah, and otherjournals. Nominated numerous timesfor the PushcartPrize inpoetry, she teaches creative writing and literature at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and is on the editorial staff of Prairie Schooner. The Glory of Love Warren Woessner Another Kind of Tenderness Xue Di Introduction by Theodore Deppe Translated by Keith Waldrop, Forrest Gander, Stephen Thomas, Theodore Deppe, and Sue Ellen Thompson with Hu Qian, Wang Ping, HiI Anderson, Waverly, and lona Crook Litmus Press http://www.litmuspress.org 129 pages; paper, $15.00 At a recent interview in Minneapolis, Gary Snyder was asked what poets he had been reading recently. He answered to the effect that he didn't try very hard to keep up with contemporary poetry, but continued to read the ancient Chinese masters, such as Tu Fu and Su Tung-p'o. He might remember these lines by Tu Fu from "Written on the Wall at Chang's Hermitage": You have learned to be gentle As the mountain deer you have tamed. The way back forgotten, hidden Away, I become like you, An empty boat, floating, adrift. Snyder should add the poems...