There is now a(nother) revival of interest in the long poem, and here is a long poem that works to resolve "threats of opposite" by playing them out on as many different levels as possible: psychological, cultural/historical, sexual, linguistic, and poetic. Waid's loose, disjointed narrative, apparently random in its associations ("paratactic"), plays off tightly organized formal poetic techniques--structure questioning itself. The Argument of the Poem (as Milton might say): WIttgenstein's (& Lacan's) baby is birthed into the world by doctors and nurses who snip off his foreskin while initiating him into the culture's language games. "Uncle" appears almost at once--Uncle Sam, perhaps, but maybe also the initiatory mother's brother of matriarchal societies. The narrator observes Uncle's dithering, records his odd jobs, worries, and search for the "faster route to Medical Emergency." "She" is there, too--as obliquely observed as Uncle. Finally Uncle "leaps from the balcony" as She and the narrator unite in a Nietzschean (if rather muted) "flight out of the sex-distinguished."--Charlotte Pressler
This review originally appeared in TapRoot Reviews #3,
Contact the editor, luigi-bob drake, at Burning Press
Copyright Burning Press 1993, 1995.