In one of the final poems of this book-length pursuit of an evanescent solace, the anonymous narrator says, "I am, after all, a woman / who has loved and remembers well / the addiction and the terror" ("My French Film"). These self-portraits serve as the vivid initiation rites of an intensely sensual poet and reveal the indefatigable hope that the ecstasy of addiction seems to portend: "let the ovaries stir the soup of testicles / and only with this dream shall all anguish make contact." (I Eat My Children). Indeed, "It takes courage to take the make-up off." In the best of these poems, the mask of "theater of beauty" depict a vulnerability that is in itself a reward worthy of the risks needed to attain it. –Bill Mohr