Without [Paperback]

Poetry. The series of poems in Maxine Chernoff's WITHOUT are elegiac brushstrokes, each somewhat feathery and brushing in more than one direction, which creates tension and unexpected arrivals as well as departures: someone or something is missing. Parts of the world are wavering and parts have disappeared. What remains is treated in the subtle management of the lines without a hint of punctuation, which allows for waves of attention, as meaning rises and subsides. The emotional impact is powerful, as are the recognitions, such as when darkness loses / its waiting mirror / and tuning forks / stand in for solace and readers asleep / mouthing their dreams / fears of whispering / become a creed / until life blurs / like any lens / that fails at attention. There's a sense of meaning passing with the solidity and darkness of time.

The protagonist of these fifty brilliantly condensed elliptical poems never feels sorry for herself: she knows only too well that 'no currency / buys your / erasure.' And she can even smile at the thought that 'maybe you'll freeze / trying to forget / how things were / before they weren't....' Indeed, one thing Maxine Chernoff is never without is an unfailing tact—a dazzling inventiveness that distances the pain and transforms it into verbal pleasure. As in Emily Dickinson's lyric, 'After great pain a formal feeling comes.' —Marjorie Perloff