A Gathering of Matter, a Matter of Gathering

Book excerpt: Dawn Lundy Martin's work is neither language poetry, which rejects the speaking subject, nor strictly lyric, which embraces the speaking "I." Martin's poems bend the form into something new, seeing a way to approach the horrific and its effect on the psyche more fully than might be possible in the worn groove of the traditional lyric. Her formal inventiveness is balanced by a firm grounding in bodily experience and in the amazing capacity of language to expand itself in Martin's hands. She explodes any pretense at a world where words mean exactly what we want them to mean and never more nor less -- Back cover.