Private Hunger

Melody Lacina

Private hunger is a fine book when Melody Lacina sticks to the image and lets the reader work out the moral for himself. There are more than a comfortable number of poems here where that doesn't occur, but the strength of Lacina's eye for image overpowers those snatches where she decides to hit the reader in the face with the dead herring of message, and thus ultimately the book is recommended. Lacina's work has an earthy quality to it that is refreshing in academic poetry; this is get down and work in the dirt poetry, not ivory tower poetry, dealing with day-to-day life as lived by us common folk, and there's not enough of that going around. Worth a look.