Generally I’m against references to Leonard Cohen in either fiction or poetry (in case you’re wondering, there seem to be a lot of them) but in Myrna’s case I’m gonna make an exception. Myrna’s poetry cuts through the crap. More a listing of observations then any misguided attempt to transcend the limits of language, her poems generally succeed on their own modest terms. So “Leonard appears/wears grey/holds mike like sacred icon/older crowd recall/first time they heard Suzanne” and, in her own calm, precise, methodical way, Myrna tells us how it exactly is. She does it again in “We are the Kind of Country”, a send-up of the way we sell out our own lives for cheap trinkets and tourist titillations. And she definitely brings it all home in the title poem, “I Drive with the Evil Eye” where the seemingly simple premise of illness in the family becomes a souvenir to hope and the continuity of generations. It’s rare to encounter a self published writer so assured of her own vision, so free of excess and contrivance, so dedicated to the reader. (HN)
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