Trash

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Alternately bitingly caustic, zanily funny and poignantly sad, these prose poems focus on black women's experiences. Gossett uses ordinary events as springboards from which to draw conclusions about sexism, racism, employment and other societal/political issues. Avoiding didacticism and rhetoric, she renders snippets of overheard conversations, describes subway passengers, parodies political platitudes and meditates on subjects ranging from labor relations to romantic entanglements``what I want to know is /what about king kongs wife and his kids / mrs kong and the little kongs / whatever happened to them after he deathwished and tripped himself right out of their lives / . . . did mrs kong get a job as a maid in a circus monkey act / . . . did nair offer her an exclusive lifetime contract / or did she fade into obscurity . . . .'' Indeed, it is Gossett's fine eye for detail and her keen ear for the rhythms of speech and of jazz and blues that lend this debut collection its considerable potency and authority. (Nov.)