Guernica Editions
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A Bride in Three Acts
Guernica Editions, 1983
Trade Paperback
ISBN13: 9780919349339
ISBN10: 0919349331
English
$15.00 Canada, $15.00 US
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Mary Melfi's poetry is, despite its use of tough, surprising, visual comparisons, very direct. Her words strike like a hammer on a nail. The images arise from our highly technological world. Melfi does not care for lace gloves, Persian carpets, or the panoramas of Northern intangible greenery. Whatever lifts man and woman to the brightness of their union finds warmth in her heart. Whatever makes man and woman rot from the inside is crushed by Melfi's pitiless cynicism. A collection of poems that reads like a play.
Hope is a woman with a gold watch chain,/ swinging it right and left, left and right .../ ordering everything to be under her control and to be dazzled by it.
Melfi can use words and images the way you or I might borrow clothes from the wardrobe of a total stranger: with pleasure, abandon, and no preconceptions about what 'matches' or goes together. There are many pleasant (and unpleasant) surprises which follow. To Mary Melfi's skilled hands and ears and eyes, Canadian English is the raw material for play and speculation and fantasy.
Broadside
Mary Melfi displays an intensely private imagination and frequently creates an off-from-reality sensation ... Her best poems develop easily, offer satisfying surprises, and reveal a deeply felt sense of alienation and isolation.
Canadian Literature
Mary Melfi's poetry is filled with mysterious sign posts that take the reader on an intriguing and sometimes terrifying journey.
Mamashee
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