Lisa Rogal : la belle indifference

la belle indifference exposes and inverts the conflict of desire, questioning the basis of want, and conceding the impracticality of the self. Rogal’s poems capture an inner auto-correcting at play in a boldly contemplative voice with overarching homages to Emily Dickinson that seal the work’s paradoxical balance of reservation and avowal. The false enticement of fantasy rings true, providing “the usual mode / to construct / a scene,” and quickly imploding. — Emily Toder  This is a book about body in space, a body in space, perhaps a female body in space, perhaps a female’s body in space. It’s a work of art that seeks a space and is making space for this body that is pre-female, sub-female and supra-female and female-loving and desire-loving and careful and close female-desire-mind observing of that which is desire and that what is done to desire in the female body, to the female’s body. I want to say loudly that when I read la belle indifference I didn’t feel indifferent, I felt very