Erin Mouré Critical Essay | Critical Review by Charlene Diehl-Jones

SOURCE: "Maps of Our Knowing," in Books in Canada, Vol. XXI, No. 9, December, 1992, pp. 44-5.

In the generally favorable review below, Diehl-Jones examines the strengths and weaknesses of Sheepish Beauty, Civilian Love.

Erin Mouré opens her new book, Sheepish Beauty, Civilian Love, with a poem that in certain ways sets up her whole project:

      What is "transubstantial" in the word, the hallucination of
      this & that, the words not containers of meaning but
 
      multipliers, three tongues in one mouth, distinction
      without denotation or connotation, this, that, referential.
 
                  .....
 
                   The beauty of
      this & that, as if even memories are transubstantial,
      & they are, alive in maps of neurons
      in the cortex
      beside the maps for presence, for place in the universe,
      for hearing, for sexual feeling, hereafter
 
      known as love
 
      the unmentionable
      ("Corrections to the Saints: Transubstantial")

Once words are not containers but multipliers, the whole poetic universe blows open: you aren't telling but discovering. Then even the unmentionable can be...
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