Jennifer Moxley. The Sense Record and Other Poems.(Book Review)

Chicago Review, June, 2003 by Glomski, Chris

Washington, D.C.: Edge Books, 2002.78 pp. $12.50 The Sense Record is Jennifer Moxley's second full-length collection of poems. Like its predecessor, Imagination Verses (Tender Buttons, 1996), it evinces her concerns, fears, obsessions, doubts, and--passim--hopes regarding poetry and a life devoted to writing it.

If this sounds old hat consider these two interrelated facts concerning The Sense Record: first, the twenty-seven poems it comprises are not easily locatable within the spectrum of either innovative or mainstream writing trends--indeed, Moxley's syntactical maneuvers sometimes sound almost like archaisms, strange prosodic throwbacks echoing a higher and more formal-sounding style than we have heard for some time from any quarter; and second,...