\s mYevtew KALEIDOSCOPE - University of British Columbia

BOOKS IN REVIEWcentre. Between the boredom of Canadideand the buggery of Oblongh, thereader faces consuming a bad batch ofCan. Lit. Here lies penury not plenitude.KRISTOFFER F. PAULSONSYMPATHETIC MAGICFLORENGE VALE, The Amorous Unicorn. Porcupine'sQuill, $7.95.PENNY KEMP, Binding Twine. Ragweed, $8.95.ANN FOX CHANDONNET, Auras, Tendrils:Poems of the North. Penumbra, $7.95.MARIANNE BLUGER, On Nights Like This.Brick Books, $4.50.The Amorous Unicorn, by artist FlorenceVale, is a children's book for adults. Valeapproaches her subject — erotic adultlife — with a child's abandon. The bookis a grand romp through the life of thesenses, full of pollen-laden bees, blackbutterflies, and sweaty thighs. Limericksabound : "There was a young lady namedFlory / who frightened a moose in aquarry." Several pieces have an epigrammaticturn :Tragedyisloving a manwho could drive Oscar Wilde.Equally as witty (and erotic) are Vale'spen and ink drawings throughout thecollection. In the cover picture, "AmorousUnicorn," a unicorn sports a distinctlyphallic horn.The unicorn had a headacheand was seen rustling his hornin the oak leaves.Soft perfume and pink cloudsfloated all around.It is an orgiastic book, the senses "buffettedby one ecstasy after another," anda book of magical regeneration:Golden water from asecret wellswelling in the earliest dawnspilling nectar only meant for butterfliesand lucky me revivingwith the drops.The Dionysian dimension is delicatelytempered by moments of mature sadness,such as in "Leaves Hung Down," anunderstated lament for a dead child.Vale's poems scorn laboured interpretation;her craft is open, generous, andconfident — a gift to the reader.In 1980, poet Penny Kemp lost custodyof her children. Binding Twine is herrecord of that loss: "testimony the judgedid not, could not hear." According toher preface, Kemp uses poetry as "a kindof sympathetic magic" to review painand win "a gift of awareness." Thismagic, her last strength, sometimes takesthe form of incantation, words as witchcraft.She asked for my children.She asked for their things.She asked for the tableon which sat my typewriter.She got the children.She got their things.She got more writingthan she could have dreamt up.I kept the table andthe typewriter.Wary of "a lurking desire for vengeance,a stridency," Kemp's record of her journeythrough stages of naïveté, shock,confusion, and hatred transcends vindictiveness.Her simplicity, at its best, is persuasive:an agony not to be denied orignored. Often the style is prosaic butcharged in its banality, as when shenaïvely first sends her son to stay with hisfather :hi and goodbyeand see you around.At least now his fathersees him. Isn't thatwhat I asked for?Puns and wordplay gain Kemp a distance181