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Review
of Zeppo's First Wife
by Fred Marchant, Provincetown Arts, 2006
"A
'new and selected' collection of poetry affords the
reader many pleasures a single volume of poetry rarely
does. Looming large among these is the chance to track
the writer’s growth as an artist. And, because
of the broader canvas, one might get from a “new
and selected” group of poems a firmer sense
of the writer’s preoccupations in theme and
subject matter. Probably the greatest pleasure, however,
is the chance to pin down what has drawn one to the
work time and again. This became apparent to me as
I read the nearly three hundred pages of Zeppo’s
First Wife by Gail Mazur, a 'new and selected' collection
that gathers twenty-two new poems and a very generous
selection from Ms. Mazur’s four previous books.
Judging by my marginal notes and underlining, I am
invariably taken by the exquisitely crafted endings
of her poems. Book by book, year after year, her poems
startle and move the reader with their capacity to
end on a note that belongs to her and no one else.
Gail Mazur, it seems, is a master of poetic closure.
. . . I think the endings of Gail Mazur's poems, no
matter how sad, frightened, or perplexed, offer us
a luminous quality . . . a quality that marks these
new and selected poems from beginning to end."
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