Mrs. Belladonna's Supper Club Waltz

"MRS. BELLADONNA''S SUPPER CLUB WALTZ contains work that is a rarity in American literature: a trilogy of prose poems. Charles Fort explores the Other through the use of an elaborate persona. ''Darvil,'' he notes, is a ''composite of devil and evil,'' but he gives him a noble lineage: ''direct descendent of Leo Africanus.'' In deconstructing the great patchwork quilt that is American culture, Fort undermines any notion of the Other while understanding all too well the reality of it. His poems are jazzy riffs through Fourth of July bombast, Native American lore, Afro-Caribbean rhythms, and the detritus of a post-war materialism. And his comedy is Swiftian; he is most brutally funny when he is angriest."—Donald Soucy