Those familiar with the works of both poets will easily recognize the voices, and who wrote which poem. The overall effect is that of jazz riffs; it has a good solid flow to it. To respect the structure of the book, I will refer to individual poems only by their titles, and not differentiate between the individual styles of the poets.
To do so would work against the book's concept; it would also be petty to say one poet's work is more successful within Zoo than the other poet. That just wouldn't be right - these are both mature, weighty voices.
In poems such as "The Cookie Feeding Frenzy and Other Stories" sharply written thumbnail sketches of abused animals are given. "A seven-month-old giraffe ran into a wall, broke her neck and died after being spooked by a large bar of chocolate at the Columbus Zoo."
And from the same poem, on the subject of coin throwers at zoos: "If viewed at the right angle in a strong autumn sunlight, a quarter can look very much like a peppermint drop. Penguins' digestive tracts simply aren't equipped to digest small pieces of round metal". The dry, spare tone works well here, emphasizing the horror of these facts about life in zoos.
"Jewels of the Rain Forest: The Western Australian Museum" names the problem with zoos and museums. Quite simply, it's people being nasty voyeurs. Even, and especially, with the excuse of aesthetics.
"You cannot smell death
for death is a jewel
and epitaphs are name tags
flying as tomb flags
and pallbearers
lug display cases
to their own funerals
birdwings
owls
moths."
When I was six years old my mother took me to the Museum of Natural History in New York for what she thought would be an educational, exciting afternoon. I took one look at the huge stuffed elephant in one of the halls and began screaming. It frightened me, because I knew it was dead. It loomed over me with a weight that suggested thousands of years of violent death. Nothing could convince me otherwise, or that the smaller stuffed birds in the dingy display cases were worth looking at, and would not scare me as much. I knew something was wrong with the whole set-up, and it may be that a child's gut reaction, if not tampered with, could prevent the whole mess of zoos and "natural history museums", if extended on a global basis.
On the other hand, there's always the human impulse towards evil, which doesn't exclude children. An outstanding example of this is the section of a long prose poem "Guns, Dead Goats & My Black Heart", which presents the edginess of the narrator's brother, eager for living things to shoot. ( -"look at his leg jumping like a jack hammer under the table, listen closely to his conversation, if you don't believe me talk about sexuality & throw in some compassion for him to respond to, he seems socialized but this is exactly the type that will do it.")
The exquisite, restrained language of a poem called "Quail's Eggs" also makes the question of morality clear.
"You still fear the moment
when you reached down
and grabbed a handful of those
beautiful and delicate eggs
ignoring the frantic quails at your feet
and hurled them at your brother
without knowing why.
You can't forget. And he
can't forget his reply."
(Reviewed by Sharon Olinka, September 2003)
