Angie Estes strategy of Latin, French, and English quotes or translations distances the reader. Her book first appears difficult, but once the reader finds a comfort level with the language, the poetry isn't as difficult to enter. The foreign languages create a European and Romantic context for the work. In this sense, the nature of the quotes used, always in italics, sincerely speak to the subject matter and work as a whole. In a book about love, why not use romance languages. The quotes, along with epigraphs and sources quoted, create a learned atmosphere. Estes book marginalized you if you can't keep up with the discourse. Her English is already loaded, so with the addition of multiple texts and languages, we may struggle to keep up.
Script Folio 43 Split pomegranate, common rhinoceros beetle, Scarlet Turks='s cap lily folding back it's red lips while anthers circle the pistil's one hand: above them six lines are written in chancery script with lettere tagliate , letters cut like the long lines of pasta our parents cut on our plate, the work of two people who never met. The two halves of each letter--below and above-- are severed or sewn together by inked chain links like those that knot a fence or a stitch that unravels the whole length of a sentence if a stray thread is pulled--chain letter, chain gang, chain mail, chain saw-- or those paper links that wrap themselves around the Xmas tree: eentsy weentsy spider sidling up to each letter, each word, casting and binding in silk as if to ravel and unravel once felt the same. ---------------------------- Food Foods were eaten like the grossness our parents turned into freedom tickets away from the kitchen table, the alteration of rules we didn’t know exis...
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