Stages: Selected Poems (Essential Poets 77)

Poetry. Mary Melfi's work appears unclassifiable. There are surrealist fireworks, gnostic philosophizing, black and white humor, an absurdist appreciation of the process of existence. Hers is not one voice, but rather a number of voices organized in a modern fugue: a counterpoint to its own cantus firmus. Swordfishes, swordsmen too, are equipped / to get along in life / but I'm equipped to be a dancer on the stars. / Your love is my equipment. (Sword Dances).