This impressive volume of poetry is framed on a cosmopolitan, global scale and fleshed with intelligent and compassionate observation. Although, there is the odd, once-in-a-while ode to nothing in particular, most poems in this second anthology of Venkateswaran's are anchored firmly in mythologies that may be traditional or contemporary, ranging from the Ramayana to the saga of Aung San Suu Kyi. Furthermore, each poem is powerful with fluent lyricism and I found myself reacting to the tonal reverberations of seemingly simple lines long after the physical act of reading. Consider for instance, "...loss weighed like a gold coin/in the bottom of your chest" with its pithy coupling of emotion (chest = heart) to economics (chest of treasure).

Pramila Venkateswaran is a professor of English and Women's Studies and her engagement with both of those environments would be obvious even if the bio note did not take care to inform us. In fact, some of the best poems (of the several excellent poems in this volume) are those that corral her incisive analysis of the language with her feminist sympathies. In the poem titled A Sound's Body, for instance, the epigraph that posits Trinh Min-ha's idea of "linguistic flesh" is coupled with Assia Djebar's point that in Arabic, "woman" and "wound" share a common sound, which leads Venkateswaran's addition to this growing feminist palimpsest:

Like in Tamil ponnu girl and punnu wound
flesh word word flesh
are separated by a vowel change.


And further down,

...search for its companion in English
off-internal rhyme and homonym
I see woman flesh out woeman
witness a sign’s power over our experience.

The poems -- about sixty of them -- seem to sample everything from pathos to conversation to humor. Apart from the skilled multicognitive acrobatics, there are anthems to mothering daughters and mentoring students, cultural misunderstandings and agit-prop lyrics. And although this sounds like a veritable medley of disparate styles, Venkateswaran's very recognizable, extremely potent voice radiates from each of these poems. It is a voice so potent, in fact, that I feel no contradiction in wishing this slim volume with its small-press credentials a far-reaching distribution and a considerable readership.

Book Description: These are fierce poems, Amazonian in their reach which challenges male territory and waterfalls but further challenges young women to find their warrior selves. Transgression, tresspass and daring are vital in them. However, the anguish of being female is just as vigorously their property. -- Karen Swanson.

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