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As If. Angela
Consolo Mankiewicz. Lummox Press: San Pedro, CA, 2008.
Little Red Book Series: # 55. 36 pages. $6.00.
Lummox Press, PO Box 5301 San Pedro, CA 90733-5301
Lummoxpress.
PayPal.
Although Consolo Mankiewicz is very preoccupied with poetic
forms like madrigals, when you read her poetry, form is totally
forgotten as you are overwhelmed by the depths of her
observations. Here the meditative center is Time, Death,
Maximization of The Now:
Standard advice to the diseased...
Don't dwell...don't let it
consume you, don't speculate—
live your life not what-if,
but as-if...
...thumbs up—thumbs
is not deferrable;
neither is hope,
a burden of manners
immortality imposed,
a gesture
to tame madness
into constructs
of treatments, checkups...
functioning normally,
without notice, as if
you're still
like everyone else.
—from
As If,
p.33.
Nowhere else on the contemporary scene can you find such a
touching, realistic, moving series of poems about mortality and
survival. Perfect poetry, but as you read it you keep wishing
that she'd do another meditative book similar to Krech's
buddhistic musings that skips poetic form altogether and just
tells it like it is across the table while you're sitting having
a small, skim latté
with Angela under the down-sliding
sun and passing clouds.
--Hugh Fox April, 2008
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