Garments of the Known

Lynn Szabo is an assistant professor of English and Coordinator of
Freshman English Courses at Trinity Western University.

The epigraph of this collection of raw and hungry poems comes from Djuna
Barnes: “you have dressed the unknowable / in the garments of the
known.” To a large degree, Sacuta’s “alone and lonely” gay male
narrators do exactly that as they express the grief, anger, and angst
produced by unfulfilled homoerotic desires.

In “gay in stock’s time,” the poet expresses outrage at the
Christian fundamentalism of Stockwell Day, arguing that moral choice is
irrelevant to the homosexual orientation: “free will is improbable /
where there’s desire.” This same orientation comes uncomfortably
close to rationalizing the pedophiliac impulse in its claim that it
“will be the shadow come / to take children to the underworld.” But
just as suddenly, the poetic voice takes on the gentleness and warmth of
a son who paints beautiful pictures of his brother’s love and his
parents’ aging life together. Death plays a leading role throughout
the collection, from the victims of the Titanic to the bizarre and
mysterious demise of a scuba diver at the West Edmonton Mall.