Anna Donovan reviews Duane Locke's Voices from a Grave: Homage to Edgar Lee Masters

In "Voices from a Grave: Homage to Edgar Lee Masters" Duane Locke mines a rich vein to a haunting, intensely personal depth. While Masters offers a collection of voices, Locke zeroes in on the exploration of one voice. The revealed verses unfold into a monumental work of truly uncommon power and monolithic proportions.

The commanding emotional force grabs and overwhelms the reader in a flood of intensely tactile sensations. In the mind's eye tentative fingers are absorbed, inevitably drawn to trace "empty holes" and the aching immediacy of raindrops.

"...But, raindrop, my darling,
I now have no eyelids,
I have no eyes,
I have only empty holes
Called “eye sockets,”
But I can see what I could not see when alive,
The exciting curves
Of your raindrop hips and thighs."

The reader continues to be prompted, seized by another's quest, seized by questions: "When I was alive, what was my name." And the soul shudders at the insights:

"I have no ears, only skull holes,
But hear,
Hear clear and distinctly a loud voice,"

"Yes, living is impossible. I was not
Alive when I was alive..."

"But no one hears
What another says.
It was the same when we
Were alive,"

A varied and surreal procession of characters speak with commanding voices. One cannot help but be totally engrossed, intrigued, compelled to whisper with total conviction: "this is poetry at its most grand."

Then a soul tremor at the end:

"Now, I do not know who I was
When I was alive.

Perhaps, I was Troilus.

Where, where, are you, Cressid."

Kafka immediately came to mind and his proclamation that art should be "the axe for the frozen sea in us." Axe indeed, Duane Locke's work obliterates with its power and the impact lingers like shock waves.