are never without skill, feeling, and a coherent and gripping voice, [Henri] Cole--like Plath and Merrill--sometimes favored a style too ornate, precious, and even sentimental for the sobriety of tone and wisdom the early poems aspired after. It is a problem the work knows and seeks to work through:She lay there like a mummy,
like the wreckage of an ancient queen,
mild, yet locked within herself.
("The Mare," 7)
from The Brooklyn Rail: Poetry: The Cooked and the Rare
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