Kicknosway's energetic, direct and often frankly sexual free verse gained notice during the 1970s and '80s, culminating in national acclaim for Who Shall Know Them?
(1985), narrative poems based on photographs by Walker Evans. Kicknosway's 13th volume (her first since 1992's Listen to Me
) begins with the Evans poems, raw and sympathetic imaginings of working-class rural couples. The best suggest similar poems by W. C. Williams: "And he made her/ stand by his car/ until he'd spread rags on the seat/ for her to sit on." Much of her other work addresses love and (heterosexual) sex, trying hard to break taboos. Vivid and easy to follow, the work is punctuated by Kicknosway's own drawings of women, decked out in ball gowns and riding on motorbikes, whose spontaneous feel complements her writerly strengths. While some of the verse can seem rushed, or inattentive to sound and form, some of Kicknosway's prose poems blast an in-your-face energy reminiscent of Kathy Acker: "saints and holy men everywhere, and some of them had strong white teeth, and some of them masturbated openly while calling on Jesus to kiss them." Near the end of this ample selected, Kicknosway reaches towards greater verbal difficulty, and greater control: the series "Short Takes" goes far toward achieving those aims, as do the short-lined sequences (like "Winter") with which Kicknosway chooses to conclude this energetically uneven collection: "Desire conjectures beauty," she tells us there, "Swims like a toad at the root." (Dec.)
