The Volcano Sequence

With eager breath, Ostriker's collection of poetry comes to life with much to convey. These sensuous poems weave a breath-taking tapestry about the feminine and the holy surrounding us in our lives, often hidden but just beneath the surface. Her knowledge of the Old Testament is clear here, and it more than enhances these poems. It gives them an added grace and strength. These poems are almost like a discussion with holy aspects of the universe, grappling toward a glorious knowing. The energy and imagery brought to mind Anita Diamant's "The Red Tent" and other feminist works, and "The Volcano Sequence" inspires just as strongly.

This is an extraordinary new book from one of America's best poets, full of powerful imagination, formal inventiveness, tireless curiosity, and profound challenges to the spirit and social arrangements of our time. Extending traditions of modernist and postmodernist long poems, The Volcano Sequence is a 119-page poem in 9 major sections plus a coda, written in a variety of poetic styles and voices ranging from lyrical meditations to provocative interrogations--of the gods, the universe, our politicians and philosophers, and our literary traditions. One of Alicia Ostriker's great strengths is her ability to write poetry that is simultaneously accessible, intellectually ocean-deep, and filled with a page-turning emotional grip. The Volcano Sequence's poetic explorations interweave an array of spiritual, psychological, and social themes. In one of the central images of the book, Ostriker takes on the role of a feminist midwife trying to use her imaginative powers to re-birth female energies that have historically been devoured by patriarchal conventions. Like lava in a volcano, long-repressed liberating energies can eventually find a way to get out and reshape our world--"sometimes the stories take you and fling you against a wall / sometimes you go right through the wall"(119). Almost every page of this new book is filled with memorable lines, the kind of poetry that makes your spine sit up and take notice, that makes you see the world from new, amazing angles.

The poetry of Alicia Suskin Ostriker is complex, original, and written with a truly literate and skilled economy of words. The Volcano Sequence is a compilation of verse that fully showcases Ostriker a master poet in the full vigor of her imagination and wordsmithing talent. Learn To Recognize The Gestures: when her hands cup her breasts/she enjoys her sweet strength/sap ascends the oak//dancing she causes/the young to dance/and to kiss//she may carry a weapon/a knife a gun a razor/she may wear a belt of skulls//when she discharges her anger in laughter/white lightning illuminates the horizon/from pole to pole//often she lays her hand over her eyes/like a secretary leaving/an office building at evening//cradling that infant boy/sitting him on her lap/smoothing the folds of her dress: this means pity//arms crossed: this signifies judgment.