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Open Books: Event Archive
March 02, 2006 07:30 PM
JOSEPH CAMPANA
Listed among those thanked in Joseph Campana's inaugural collection,
The Book of Faces ($14 Graywolf), are Elizabeth Bishop, Catullus, Allen
Ginsberg, George Herbert, George Oppen, and Edmund Spencer, and the wide
ranging aesthetic reflected in that list is reflected in this unusual book
as well. But the being that most graces, haunts, stains these pages is
Audrey Hepburn. She is object of desire, emblem, icon, muse, presented in
fact, fantasy, and metaphor. Sometimes playful, frequently intense, the
poems vary in style, from a philosophical meditation on idolatry to spare,
unsettling scripts to a sad cha-cha song to an abecedarian piece titled "A
Is for Audrey, C Is for Chaucer." Several of the poems take their titles
from Ms. Hepburn's films. Here are the closing lines to "Roman Holiday":
"Rome is a mouth in a cave // that will swallow me and my lies. In another /
life I'd be a frog and you would be my // princess. In another life I would
sleep forever. / You don't understand me, but you're patient. // I need a
break -- I'll break into you."
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