Duet

Donalee Moulton-Barrett was a writer and editor in Halifax.

Gertrude Katz is like the little girl who had a little curl right in the middle of her forehead. When her poetry is good, it’s very, very good, but when it’s bad ....

And much of it is indeed bad. Poems like “Shore Leave” and “Childbirth” are rough and unfinished. There is no subtlety of thought, no substance, and very little poetic rhythm in lines like these from “Childbirth”: “Tonight I’m your plaything — / A slave girl you purchased. / Tomorrow I’ll be your wife.”

As these lines suggest, Katz is concerned with the relationships women have — with men, with their families, and with themselves. It’s a theme that infuses her best, and her worst, work. In “For Rachel Reznikoff-Chalepskiya” and “One Cold Night” she succeeds in creating a tightly knit poetic pattern. Both poems open with a question. “For Rachel” begins powerfully: “Was it madness after all, Mama? / — bringing your Russian shtetl to America, / smuggled into Canada / safely in your head.” Just as powerful are the opening lines of “One Cold Night”: “Was I difficult to strip? / Birch bark peels in smooth strips, / White — like a Chinese mourning robe.”

But these are Duet’s success stories and they don’t mask the problem with Katz’s work: no consistent poetic vision. Many of her poems are discordant; others are trivial (the poem is “technically” good, but says nothing). As a result, the entire collection is jagged, uneven in style and quality. As you read one poem and then another, you literally go from bad to worse to great.