From Library Journal
This first collection of poetry in English by Dutch novelist, poet, and travel writer Nooteboom is a window on a surreal landscape in which "the sea is a mirror of rotting glass." Out of a quarry of private dreams, Nooteboom mines "locked-up images" that are "a gnosis of masked sayings/ in a script ever more obscure." He writes of "untamable chaos" where flesh and soul intersect and selfhood is subject to riddles ("a fetus in bed" and Leonardo "dissecting a womb") that are beyond language and recognition. Some poems resemble Waiting for Godot; others express Miranda-like wonder: "So many forms of existence! So many creatures/ to suffer and laugh in these stony hills!" Despite the transformative energy, however, Nooteboom fails in his attempt to create a cartography of the unconscious ("a map painted/ of soul"). With these depth-psychology "ciphers" offering neither identity nor personality, readers will conclude that Nooteboom's poetry, in English translation at least, doesn't compel attention.?Frank Allen, North Hampton Community Coll., Tannersville, Pa.
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