Under the Quick

In Molly Bendall's fourth book of poems, the verbal underworld of doing and undoing-oath, love charm, prayer, curse-becomes a refuge of tenderness and malediction. One of her generation's most subtly imaginative poets, Bendall overhears-and whispers to the reader-a lost language which is by turns brainy and promiscuous, clueless and inscrutable, bewitching and bereft: a voice skirting a strange silence, a "goblin market" of snares, cures, trifles, and métiers inconnus. Under the spell of these poems, worlds once imagined break into growls and fingersnaps undoing the rough magic of impersonation. In the gyroscope of the poetic mind, a wild imbalance is also a balance finely-tuned. Song reels in its strange ecstasy. Molly Bendall is such a singer, such a poet. Here is a poetry of charm in the deepest sense-where dark lore is the undercurrent to daily life, where beneath the poem's manners lurks a curious magic. Molly Bendall stands at the impact point of such collisions-right where the world grows complicated, right in the midst of its difficult magic-and lets the disorder complete its song. -Dan Beachy-Quick MOLLY BENDALL is the author of three previous collections of poetry, AFTER ESTRANGEMENT, DARK SUMMER, and ARIADNE'S ISLAND. She has received the Eunice Tietjens Prize from Poetry magazine, the Lynda Hull Poetry Award from Denver Quarterly, and two Pushcart Prizes. She teaches at the University of Southern California.