Reviews for Théorie de Dieudonné cristalline II

The average rating for Théorie de Dieudonné cristalline II based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2021-03-28 00:00:00 Danny Saylors Kent Shaw's insightful comment (above) aside, Arnold's "Introit" is a master-trope for her entire body of writing in poetry. It introduces The Reef sequence just as it introduces Arnold's world as a series. The series is endless. Arnold notices the roiling stream speeding up so that it goes "past | as blurred or sharp, depending | on how fast whatever guides | the eye can follow," as that equivocating syntactical aperture (whatever guides the eye can follow) also speeds up, tempo rubato, "then | flip back, catching the next | unbounded segment" -- and suddenly we catch that the speaker is describing her own syntax -- "of the stream | that's hurtling down the giant | runnel it has tunneled at | god knows how long . . ." where at the close of this image the "runnel/tunnel" rhyme suggests that it's not just syntax being described but the language itself. It's a strong poem, and as Shaw remarks, a trope for the irrationality by which a life is invaded by disease. The poems in the sequence's balance are hung on their chronological (confessional) wire. Arnold would come to abandon the prose adumbration by her second book. The thinking through, as resistance -- as defense -- of the sequence is evident in this debut, as is the thought's endgame in "rogue" error, in secondary cancers triggered by drugs and "cures".

Review # 2 was written on 2016-05-23 00:00:00 Suzanne Mcgifford In Arnold's poem, "Introit," she offers the image of a river roiling--a river that might be, in the end, aware of its own long history. This particular river broke through a stone barrier to make a new path to the sea. I admit I was lured into the book by this opening image. There is no explanation for why this area of the land would have to be where the river meets the ocean. Arnold was establishing, for me, a logic of natural action, whose logical basis is irrationality. As I read further into the book, I started to see this analogy relating to the sickness that broke into her life. And, at that point, I was invested in what Arnold might do. Unfortunately, by the third section, that urgency surrounding the sickness gave way to a series of unsubtle ruminations about how difficult sickness is. It could be I'm skeptical about the assumed intimacy in confessional poetry, or maybe I'm just worried by what exigence there is in confessionalism.