In the Mecca

I knew from the start this book was going to be an experience. The opening pages made me feel, in Emily Dickinson’s words, “as if the top of my head were taken off.” (The Mecca is an apartment building.)

… Mrs. Sallie hies home to Mecca, hies to marvelous rest; ascends the sick and influential stair. The eye unrinsed, the mouth absurd with the last sourings of the master’s Feast.

All the poems in this collection are difficult, but in different ways: some intellectually challenging, most emotionally challenging.