cover image Borders

Borders

Mary Crow. BOA Editions, $16 (52pp) ISBN 978-0-918526-70-0

In her first collection, Crow (translator of Woman Who Has Sprouted Wings: Poems by Contemporary Latin American Women Poets ) proves herself poetically accomplished and politically committed. The ``borders'' of the title furnish an apt metaphor: more than boundaries between countries crossed as the narrator journeys through Latin America, they also become barriers separating her from a lover and then a coupled ``us'' from a ``them.'' Crow's ``they'' signifies political prisoners and people imprisoned by their beliefs: the crippled parishioners who toil to the tops of mountains to kiss the Christ who will ``save'' them; the men and women who seclude themselves on islands; even those who, like the narrator, attempt to forget themselves and their woes through travel. Such borders bless Crow with a necessary distance, allowing her the luxury of an observer's role along with the right to express outrage, as seen in her poem ``The Real Thing.'' There she comments on a man tortured by the police because his son is a ``subversive'': ``This is only one incident among many, / only one incident in another country. / It is not happening to you, to me.'' (Oct.)