DANDELIONS FOR BHABHA

Ranging from satire to meditation to philosophy to the comic, ClaraJoseph&rsquo,s second book of poetry, Dandelions for Bhabha, is an intenseengagement with philosophers and literary/cultural theorists and theircontroversial positions. Her poems refl ect on the postmodern conditionwhen &ldquo,The screaming begins at the wall / when one chick is taken&rdquo,and &ldquo,Universal Justice is dragged / to Auschwitz.&rdquo, The collection,divided into three sections, &ldquo,Descartes&rsquo, Lover,&rdquo, &ldquo,Jus&rsquo, Thinkin&rsquo,,&rdquo, and &ldquo,ToTalisman,&rdquo, engages with ethics and with thinkers such as Roland Barthes,Jeremy Bentham, Homi K. Bhabha, Paul de Man, Jacques Derrida,Michel Foucault, Mahatma Gandhi, Stephen Greenblatt, David Hume,Friedrich Nietzsche, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Gayatri Spivak. The poemsin Dandelions for Bhabha are, as the title hints, enchanting and unexpectedopportunities to philosophize art and aestheticize thought. Narrativesof miracles, refl ections on visuals, and dialogues of the dead enter thehopes, joys, and wonders of daily living. Joseph&rsquo,s skill is to narrow the gapbetween the creative and the critical, and to provoke._,