Luca: Discourse on Life and Death
Rochelle Owens
220 pages perfectbound
$20.00
ISBN 1-881523-12-8
Rochelle Owens’ writing, here as elsewhere, is sui generis. ...Immensely learned, sophisticated, and witty in its conceits, this Discourse
on Life and Death demands two kinds of reading. First, it should be read through from beginning to end as if it were a novel. ...But
a second reading is required to note the poem’s microstructure–its superb modulation of rhythms and internal rhymes, its ironies
and paradoxes. It is the layering of cultures and especially of myths, including our own contemporary myths of the Great Creative
Genius (always male), creating beauty out of the detritus around him, that makes Luca so distinctive. Watch out, Owens seems to
be saying, for those high-minded claims and take another look at the evidence of actual life–”a stream of molten lava burning,”
“doses of nitrogen muscle saliva,” or even “the seams/ of a discarded wallet.”
- from Marjorie Perloff's introduction