Bulrushes

The figure of the infant Moses-child of slavery, exile, captivity; lying in an ark of woven bulrushes "daubed...with slime"-is the figure for this remarkable collection. "Bring on the damn swans," the book begins, as poem by poem it strips away "art" to uncover beauty, and we find the grounds for belief, for in Madonick's hard reckoning we discover that, like the prey's vulnerability to the predator, we are nonetheless "as good as danger is." Through extraordinary range and mastery of diction and music, Madonick pits the confusions and destructions of the present, both natural and human, against the consolation and tested experience of lyric. And lyric wins-for Bulrushes is poetry itself, that fragile ark of language in which hope is borne. -William Wenthe