THE TRAVELING OUT and Other Poems

Internal evidence suggests that the author of these poems is middle aged and lives in the Southwest; but (if this surmise is true) it is the only scrap of personal information indicated by these cryptic verses. A boy flying a kite, men on sailing ships, women with black shawls and candles, deserts; these picture-poems are mute, tightly locked beneath their intricate surface design. There are life poems of menacing overtones and curious inferences. A few only present their meanings with startling clarity and force; but the overall impression is of a deceptive lucidity which conceals a varied and wide-ranging sense of unease, of sinister forces hidden in commonplace things. There is nothing vague or deliberately obscure about this reticence; it is flint-hard, verbally precise and simple; the highly personal work of a poet who says what she feels without making concessions to the reader or herself.