Four-Legged Girl by Diane Seuss, a Kirkus-Style Review

Four-Legged Girl by Diane Seuss

Poetry

 Electrifying language and evocative images anchor poems narrating the episodes—both mundane and bizarre--of a woman’s life.

Electrifying language and evocative images anchor poems narrating the episodes—both mundane and bizarre--of a woman’s life. Written from the vantage point of an older person reliving her earlier experiences, this collection of poetry is nevertheless no sedate reflection. Threading along in a loosely chronological manner, the speaker recounts with a startling vividness the loss of her father to cancer, her fresh-eyed move to New York City from the sticks of Michigan, her admittance to the fringes of the New York art world of the 60s, and her tumultuous relationship with a heroin addict. These poems are rhythmic, sensual, steamy and smoky: they gulp you down into a rabbit hole equal parts greenhouse and whorehouse, complete with fragrant metaphors and raw imagery. While there is plenty of tenderness found throughout the book, as the speaker moves from eulogizing her father to addressing her own son, the sentimental is overshadowed by the erotic, the creative, the brutal, and the starstruck, as these poems pay homage to a bygone era in American art culture and probe the realities of the body. Indeed, the speaker’s exploration of the body—especially the body claimed and experienced as female, especially this body experienced as it ages—is a sustaining theme, and one that is interrogated from a fiercely feminist perspective which revels in pleasure even as It refuses to conceal that which is ugly, painful, and/or stigmatized. Each poem in this collection is a sizzling galaxy unto itself; simultaneously, each poem is strengthened by its inclusion in the dynamic tapestry of narrative and theme that Seuss so boldly creates.