DO YOU LOVE ME? An Entertainment in Conversation and Verse

That most modern sensibility, R. D. Laing, returns with poems that show a continuing attentiveness to the everyday exchanges (some would say epiphanies) of existence. As in Knots (1970) there are dialogues that conjure up the repeated themes of therapy sessions--family tangles, lovers' snarls--but there are also shorter. more conventional forms, even some with quizzical rhyme. Sometimes the language is playful (""I was discontented/ with girls that were rented/so I had invented/ my own"") or echoes sunnier times (""Daisy, Daisy/ what are we going to do?/ I'm half crazy/I'm in love and in hate with you""). And there are the expectable sexual allusions (""Mummy'll scream/if you have a wet dream"" or ""I liked to eat mice/ that was when/ I was ten/now it's men/they're not as nice""). Frequently they seem poised on the edge of some great profundity, some measure of insight but, given the orientation, they stop short of pronouncements. Laing's earlier work has been defended by admirers, disputed by critics; this treads the same symbolic ground, presumably for the same devoted supporters.