Fingerless gloves. “We stop here to take / pictures of these / questions.” What motivated Julie Doxsee to write these poems? Can we reverse engineer “Kitchen Tour” to its writing exercise origin (“Those are [x]”)? How much for the phrase “teeth / fill with fog”? Good / but / the questions / are / dull.
Like Z.S., another Black Ocean poet, Doxsee has a pool of words she reaches for (eyes and eyeglasses [frequently destroyed, specifically crushed], water, the sky, lemons, the moon, etc.); their resonance is only their own, not Doxsee’s.
“Architecture”; see Inferno, Canto V: :“'Poet,' said I, 'fain would I speak to those two / That seem to ride as light as any foam, / and hand in hand on the dark wind drifting go.'” The cyclone, “the black wind” that has Francesca and Paolo swept up forever. A poem about an extra-marital affair. More ocean = Black Ocean. "If I write / my address on your wrist / the fog will wash it off....” Intrigue is the romance: “One day we read for pastime how in thrall / Lord Lancelot lay to love, who loved the Queen....” [Dante, Dorothy L. Sayers trans.]
Poems as surreal witticisms, not “cut-ups.”
My song is more important than yours. “You disguised you” and “I will send me.” All movies =. “I poured you / I wrapped you” and “I wrote a song about you.”
Doxsee’s interest in miniaturization (a forest beneath a slice of tomato on a vending machine sandwich) recalls a typesetter’s box wall-mounted and filled with nick-knacks instead of metal letters. A glass spark plug, a plastic sea shell, a walnut, etc.
The excellent title points to “it,” again, as in “sail it oarless” [the roller coaster]. Wizard of Oz. Eye patch. Already crushed by a house / prepared to stay shriveled and / tinned by the little / boy who wears a red shirt.
