Ring of Fire

This isn't a long review, but I love Lisa Jarnot, everything, and I cannot explain the "reasons" for these feelings, but I can feel her poems winding around inside me, especailly my legs. Isn't that enough? I could no more explain the taste of an orange, I just eat it. So eat some of these poems, or all of them. She is great, they are new, you will like them, and you may not know why.

The titular allusion to Johnny Cash is not the only thread from popular culture deftly woven into this fascinating book. Jarnot often tests, indeed pushes, the poetry-prose boundary and embraces language that is not "traditional" in poetry. The "Sea Lyrics" section, in particular, is reminiscent of Leslie Scalapino's "that they were at the beach" in a reverent, non-derivative way. The animal poems, speaking of influences, are strongly reminiscent of Marianne Moore, if she had lived in the early 21st century, and "Moo Is Om Backwards" is also a sweet homage to Gertrude Stein. But what shines brightest for me in this book is the "Eightfold Path" section (okay, it pleases my Buddhist bias) and the ecstatic lyric "Song for Philip Lamantia." This is a book I always keep near at hand.