The Elegy on Hats

First off, if you haven't read Dent's "HIV, Mon Amour," DO IT! It's an EXTRAORDINARY book. The poems here are furious, long (usually) and brilliantly rendered. She was even, I think, on the verge of another breakthrough in style ("Odes to Delayed Gratification") in which she erases punctuation and uses the appearance of fragmentation to actually give coherence to the words. Many of these poems demand rereading and consideration in terms of how good they are as poems--what you're struck with first is how intellectually and imagistically engaged she is. If you don't like big words, you won't like this poet. If you don't like thinking, this poet isn't for you (go read some John Ashbery or some Leslie Harrison). Sometimes she drops figurative language--in her self-relay race against time--to pursue a more prosaic line that can, admittedly, disappoint when this lady has so much power in her. But most of the poems here are so well-crafted you don't even notice the craft (as you do in poets like Natasha Trethewey). It's not easy to the move the heart AND the mind. And Dent, without a doubt, does both. Masterfully. Bravo.