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.