Eve

by J. N. Foster . About 30 pages. Dormant Press, 416 E. Sixth, Maryville, Mo. 64468-733.

Book Review by

I thought at first the book was Eye but it is EVE and J. N. is Jeff N. Foster, poet. There are twenty-five Eve poems, as in Adam and Eve, in this book. So first I thought, well how good could a fist full of Eve be? I didn’t know. I ate two apples and opened the book. “Shaved genitals of milk weed husk/ Performed a clitorectomy on a plank stock gate.” And then, “The tonsured macabre’s/ Syrupy benediction/ Mauling olfactory with sex.” Well, I said, leaving the Garden of Eden, not bad, not bad, indeed. And a little of religious symbols, crashes and asses and the like on Foster’s photographs on the cover. Also soft but sensual and hot but then there is the cross of Christ. Interesting or don’t touch. It is a hard space to mix the erotic with the religious. Both can get ruined real fast or get purposely preachy or too liberated and then porny. Foster seems to walk the line and mix a bit of both to get nice chemical cocktail. He lets the words themselves be erotic in their lace and leather lines. So this makes it art and not broken glass. Seduction by a drink full of vowels and juxtapositioning of weighty words. This poet knows the power of a word. He has found out. I think it got him tossed out of Eden. He bit. I bet.

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