Playfully invading the traditional territories of poetry, Sally Van Doren throws into question form, subject matter, and the sound and meaning of words. The poems in Sex at Noon Taxes mix straightforward narrative, midwestern vernacular, and linguistic ambivalence, embedded in which is a struggle between the mind and the body. While one poem admonishes the reader to "Forget the phonics / of the focal/fecal. Phrase, / fashion, and effuse," in another the speaker says, "I refine my sense of / pain when you touch me / with something blue." A preoccupation with the visual, artists, and artwork...

Sally Van Doren's imaginative new collection offers bold and beguiling poems. Uttered in intense lyrical bursts that reflect the poet's command of language both familiar and strange, the visually dramatic moments gathered here probe the time-honored themes of love and death with candor and intimacy. The poems range in tone from a tongue-twisting search for identity to a plea to engage others in the refutation of pain: "My discreet sorrow / Hides in the dichotomy / Of your duplicitous palm / Offer me your hand / Our patty-cake will / Clap away antipathy." Drawing from sources as varied as...

Sally Van Doren's Promise features a series of short lyric poems, contemplative vignettes of daily life that examine friendship, marriage, and family with a veneer of playfulness. These poems take us into a space where a year is compressed into minutes and a small trickle of memory floods the mind. Van Doren, a visual artist as well as a poet, composes word collages that help us to touch the promise underneath the surface and to make sense of the senseless.