Eve's Red Dress. Diane Lockward. Nicholasville, Kentucky: Wind Publications, 2003. ISBN 1-893239-18-7. $14.00 A review by Sherry Chandler The poems in Eve's Red Dress are about "Losing the Blues." Like any honky-tonk girl on a Saturday night, Eve slips into her red satin dress, "pull[s] up to a neon / martini glass, order[s] a shot of tequila…I'll never be royal for you again," she declares.                           I'm cerise, vermilion, scarlet,                      ruby, crimson, fuchsia, magenta,                 and flame. I could burn           the hands off a man. ("Losing the Blues," 44-45) The book is organized around five "Eve" poems that celebrate "…a world without the burden of perfection." "I didn't fall to temptation," says Eve, "I rose to it." ("Eve Argues Against Perfection," 3). Eve is all red satin and fire, companioned by the snake that is both her totem and her doom. She is defiant of feckless lovers and significantly cruel fathers. All around her, though, are women broken by loss. Fathers disappear, mothers withdraw into mourning, children are lost. Husbands and lovers are remote, barren women driven mad.      And throughout the book, women seek a return to an unconscious, perhaps prelapsarian, state: "The Barren Woman's Gift" is a stuffed tabby - given by her husband who says real ones are "sneaky." The cat, at first a baby replacement, comes to personify her defiance, "…dumps the bodies / on his side of the bed, chases him away / with her fishy breath." By poem's end, woman and cat are one, "…dainty mouth / stuffed with feathers and wings" (34-35). "The Missing Wife" runs away with her husband's dog and becomes the wilder of the two "…moved deep into the heart / of the forest. She walks / on all fours, fetches for no man, performs / no tricks" (87). Eve herself, in her final poem, becomes one with her garden, her red grows sweetbrier roses that "…bleed / over the fence," the blues wrap "…inside me / like vines" ("Eve's Own Garden," 91).      A few poems seem to be off theme: "Jesus Performs Another Miracle" that turns rain to wine and "Superman Flies" into a difficult love affair. Some, like "Emelda's Shoes," are clever but lightweight turns on a theme, filler perhaps for the strictly symmetrical form of the book - five sections of exactly eleven poems.      Lockward writes a free-verse line that is swift and compelling, and she has a penchant for lists that are a pleasure to read aloud:                                            She wants                       to go dancing in me - tango, bossa nova,                   meringue - my skirt fanning out like brushfire,                 her mother's words smouldering in ashes, wants                  to burst like a fireball onto the floor, spinning                and whirling, my skirt singing, Touch me and burn ("Eve's Red Dress," p. 49)      Eve's Red Dress wants to raise the fist of Woman reclaiming her own redemption, but Eve's fire burns both ways. The final poem, "My Husband Discovers Poetry," is an act not of redemption but of revenge:           Do you see the wounded creature           at the bottom of the stairs,           his shoulders hunched over and shaking,           fist in his mouth and choking back sobs?           It was my husband paying tribute to my art. (p. 111) A satisfying skirmish in the battle of the sexes, perhaps, but an escalation, not a negotiation. These poems are powerful, amusing, energizing, but they are a call to guerilla insurgency, not a declaration of independence. Lockward has given us cries of defiance from the walking wounded, women who are retreating from the rational as much as they are reclaiming the natural, woman as cornered cat. ____________ Sherry Chandler chairs the board of Green River Writers and is a founding member of the Mosaic poetry group. Her chapbook, Dance the Black-Eyed Girl, was nominated for the 2004 Kentucky Literary Award in poetry.			REVIEWS: Archived Femme au chapeau by Rachel Dacus interval by Kaia Sand My Father on a Bicycle by Patricia Clark The Mystery of Max Schmitt: Poems on the Life and Work of Thomas Eakins by Philip Dacey Poenix Rising: The Next Generation of American Formal Poets Sonny Williams, editor The North and South of It by Clarinda Harriss The Blue Dress by Alison Townsend Eve's Red Dress by Diane Lockward Consolation Miracle by Chad Davidson Poetry and Moral Vision: A Symposium by Ravi Shankar Good Heart by Deborah Keenan Oracle Figures by Eric Pankey The Lords of Misule by X.J. Kennedy Early Occult Memory Systems of the Lower Midwest by B.H. Fairchild The Darkness and the Light by Anthony Hecht V: Waveson.nets, Losing L'una by Stephanie Strickland The Fields of Praise by Marilyn Nelson The Night Abraham Called to the Stars by Robert Bly The Water Between Us by Shara McCallum A Saturday Night at the Flying Dog by Marcia Southwick ESSAYS: The Problem of Originality by David Gewanter If you are interested in submitting a review of a recent book (within the past 3 years preferred) of poetry, please append to an e-mail or send to: Smartish Pace Reviews P.O. Box 22161 Baltimore, MD 21203 Poets and Publishers interested in having their book(s) reviewed are encouraged to send books to the above address.