ISBN: 1932755721 9781932755725

Category: Poetry / General

Page count: 29

Carol Kanter's Out of Southern Africa is, in one view, a bestiary that animates her encounters with a flirtatious ostrich, vigilant giraffe, and somber cape buffalo, among other dazzling occupants of the veldt- elegant and homely, comic and menacing. We embrace them all, whatever their attributes, for they are as familiar as kin in these vivid portraits that nudge us toward the understanding that they are the mirrors in which we glimpse ourselves. The title of this engaging volume directs us to place, but Kanter's is far more than a travel book. The Darwinian premise haunts these poems along with the hard questions of travel, but they, as in the work of Elizabeth Bishop, are often mitigated through an ingenious rhyme or playful turn of phrase. Whether rendering the cruel beauty of the Magkudigkudi Salt Pans, the meerkat's desert maze, or the Southern Cross blinking itself awake, these poems compel the reader, like Bishop's Miss Breen, to set out for the interior. --Paulette Roeske.