Modern Love

Sheila Martindale is poetry editor of Canadian Author and Bookman and
author of No Greater Love, her sixth collection of poetry.

There is a surrealism to this collection that puts the reader at some
distance from the passion behind the poems. Mulhallen also employs myth,
art, and literary references as buffers. The result is language and
emotion under careful control.

Sustained throughout the book is the theme of loss—by death or
divorce, by time or geography. The two strongest pieces are both fairly
long, sectional poems. In “Two Weeks in May” we suffer with the poet
as she watches her father (“fierce, sweet old man, who touched my mind
with narrative”) die of cancer. “The Siegfried Poems” poignantly
chronicle the stages of a necessary but painful end to a marriage.
Mulhallen’s love poetry can be indirect and oblique—a fact that,
oddly enough, makes it more rather than less heartfelt: “like gazing
into / two circles of watery sky, knowing they’re loaded / and that
the eyes may / after all / not be focused on me.”

The one prose-poem here, “Mexican Journey,” is less successful,
with its tedious overabundance of one-word sentences.

A strong sense of place is evident throughout; Toronto, Highway 401,
the Rockies, and London (England) all contribute to the backdrop of
these powerful, if at times obscure, poems.