Intertextualities of death and its multiple others--this is a "Masque of the Red Death" played out in a large British manor house. Plague narrative weaves disparate parts together: narratives by Gertrude Stein, Albert Camus, Bram Stoker, Samuel Beckett, others; photo stills from Claude Ricochet's underground film, SANS LONGTEMPS; voices intoning poetry of ruptured self. Messerli's poems grip the sweat that pours down in the middle of a back that has been long broken by the horrific thought that even what we envision as heaven is lined with gargoyles. Fears, contagions, contaminations mark the relationships: "Blood, blood only/ binds us to the loving/ lived in the pact of acting." Artaud's THEATRE OF CRUELTY is a linguistic shadow behind every eye.--Susan Smith Nash
This review originally appeared in TapRoot Reviews #5,
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Copyright Burning Press 1994, 1996.