Catulla Et Al

Catulla et al summons up the sensual and scandalous spirit of the Latin poet Catullus - his lyricism, diatribe and bawdy - by turns wrenching, cynical, and outrageous. But whereas the Roman love chronicler is a young man about town, Tiffany Atkinson's Catulla is a free-thinking female confronting modern mores with both ambivalence and uneasy embarrassment. The Catulla poems in her second book show a shift away from the loosely confessional or straightforwardly narrative poems of her first collection, Kink and Particle, towards a more explicit playfulness with stories. Other poems try to keep one foot in a recognizable ""real world"" while still bending it out of shape with strange plot twists, elements of folk tale or myth, and philosophical musings.