THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, September 18, 1994 TAG: 9409190233
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J2 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Book Review
SOURCE: BY LYNN DEAN HUNTER
LENGTH: Medium: 61 lines
LOOSE WOMAN
SANDRA CISNEROS
Alfred A. Knopf. 115 pp. $16.
Crumpled Pillow. Coffee cup.
Flaccid rubbers on the bedside table.
Chair askew. Breakfast jam on the carpet.
Cigarette crushed into a saucer.
From the road, your car -
that burgundy dollop
color of my menstruation -
leaving and leaving and leaving me.
Legend has it that the gentlemanly Alfred A. Knopf once decreed that his publishing house would never print a book that mentioned ``cycles'': ``motorcycles or menstrual cycles.''
Obviously, the rules of literary decorum have changed; Knopf recently released Loose Woman, a collection of Sandra Cisneros' poetry, and reissued her novel, The House on Mango Street.
Small, well-designed and nicely bound, the poetry book resembles its author's publicity photo, which depicts a careful, shapely and well-dressed woman. But inside Loose Woman, the language is wild and unruly; the subject matter - love - passionate. Cisneros' voice is tough, forceful and female:
They say I'm a macha, hell on wheels,
viva-la-vulva, fire and brimstone,
man-hating, devastating,
boogey-woman lesbian.
Not necessarily,
but I like the compliment.
Subjects range from raging eroticism to violence to debasement of a beloved. Reading Loose Woman is an experience akin to immersion therapy: One becomes desensitized.
But once acclimated, one is led to examine Cisneros' purpose. Surely the point is not simply to shock Mr. Knopf or to measure the span of moral change in the past two decades. Sandra Cisneros asks her readers to toss out the old codes and redefine female poetics:
They say I'm a beast.
And feast on it. When all along
I thought that's what a woman was. MEMO: Lynn Dean Hunter is a writer who lives in Norfolk. ILLUSTRATION: Photo
RUBEN GUZMAN
Sandra Cisneros electrifies love, sex and violence in ``Loose
Woman.''
by CNB