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The Dagger Between her Teeth
by Jennifer LoveGrove
ECW Press, 2002
Reviewed by Jennifer Dales
Read
an interview with Jennifer LoveGrove
The Dagger Between her Teeth is Jennifer
LoveGrove’s first full-length collection of poetry, and its most
interesting subject is female pirates. LoveGrove’s pirate poems are
dark, lusty, and dripping with blood, bringing to life the rough world
of Anne Bonny and her fellow pirates Mary Read (her lover) and Pierre,
who is gay. These poems are based on the lives of real pirates who
sailed the seas in the 18th century. Through her poems,
LoveGrove explores female violence and ferocity, forces that allow her
female pirates to survive and even experience equality, as well as to
play out their desires, both sexual and otherwise.
Besides this exploration of feminine violence,
LoveGrove’s pirate poems make vivid stories. In the poem "Wedding
Present," it’s easy to picture Anne Bonny with mud-covered red
hair and a wet dress, slugging back whiskies and knocking a barmaid’s
teeth out:
The barmaid tries to toss her
to the storm,
instead loses two
front teeth in the scuffle,
split from her jaw,
rattling Anne’s skirts.
The night Anne marries James Bonny
she gives him a necklace, both talisman
and warning, two teeth
strung up, dangling.
The poems in this book’s other sections explore the
effects of death and violence, especially in relation to infants and
children. Some of these poems are outstanding, and like her pirate
poems, tell stories or bring to life powerful figures. One such poem is
"Nightmare Troubadour, " which personifies dark forces:
"Children, I visit each of you,/ a satellite dancer,/ black moon
invisible from the Earth,/… Now you know where/ nightmares come from:/
I can turn my horned and flaming/ insect head all the way around."
The collection’s weaker poems (appearing in its
latter sections) tend to move away from the arena of telling the stories
of others and enter into a first-person realm. These poems lack the
large, mysterious world that serves as the backdrop and emotional
foundation for LoveGrove’s best work—a world of stormy seas, horned
monsters, and ferocious pirates; the world in which LoveGrove’s art
seems to thrive.
Jennifer Dales is a writer living in
Ottawa. |
