Randall had given up her U.S. citizenship in order to be able to work in Mexico. When she decided to return to the U.S. in the 1980s this renunciation meant she had to reapply for citizenship. The government used this as an opportunity to attack Randall for her writing, and denied her citizenship. Rightly her lawyers built their case around a freedom of expression argument. What could have been an important ruling in that area of law was lost when a judge ruled that Randall had not voluntarily given up her citizenship but had been forced to do so for economic reasons. Although this meant that the case was over and Randall could resume her life here, one can’t help but wonder what the effect of a decision on the freedom of expression argument would have been on First Amendment issues, especially in light of the current environment surrounding rights of free speech and decency.

The prose sections of the book regarding her lesbianism are thin; for instance, in the narrative when she returns to the U.S., marries a man and then without discussing their life or her leaving him, she is suddenly with her female partner. She more than makes up for this lack of disclosure in her poems, though, and you do want to know. Because like any good storyteller Randall makes you fall for the character, herself. Here are two lines from the closing stanza of her poem, “But I Write”:

“I stroke your guarded back, touch your head
beneath tense crown of hair, gentle you to sleep.”

All of the poems in this section begin with a quotation and the opening words of the poem serve as the title. “How could I live” has this quote from Susan Griffin: “The body remembers who we are supposed to be.” Take a listen to the opening stanza:

“How could I live
without your temperature, deep river, perfect weight
of breast and reach of mind? How grow without your
silliness gene, look back upon each day if you
were not here: elegant, present, to catch my breath
and travel with me in any direction?”

Randall is so eloquent on America’s shortcomings I do wish that she would apply her eloquence to more of the gray areas and negativity of other places, Cuba, for instance. (However, the writing of Reinaldo Arenas, which artist/filmmaker Julian Schnabel chronicled in his film Before Night Falls, does that quite well, so of course one can turn to him for that understanding.)

Pennywhistle Press (Victor di Suvero) is off to a good start with this Compendium Series. Randall’s book is a page-turner in the best sense of that well-worn phrase.

Gary Glazner

Gary Mex Glazner founded Poetry Slams in San Francisco, spent most of 1998 travelling around the world both gathering & giving out poetry, settled in Santa Fe, New Mexico & wrote for About Poetry as our New Mexico/Southwest Museletter correspondent for several years. Among the previous feature articles he has contributed here:

• “Poetry and Art in Santa Fe,” a review of two shows that combined poetry & visual art
• “Archipoetry 101,” about the building of Albuquerque’s Poets’ Plaza
• “To Feel the Poem Dance,” a report from the First International Poetry Olympics
• “Tea House Rappers, Crucification and the Slammer,” on poetry in China 1998