Ranging from satire to meditation to philosophy to the comic, Clara
Joseph’s second book of poetry, Dandelions for Bhabha, is an intense
engagement with philosophers and literary/cultural theorists and their
controversial positions. Her poems refl ect on the postmodern condition
when “The screaming begins at the wall / when one chick is taken”
and “Universal Justice is dragged / to Auschwitz.” The collection,
divided into three sections, “Descartes’ Lover,” “Jus’ Thinkin’,” and “To
Talisman,” engages with ethics and with thinkers such as Roland Barthes,
Jeremy Bentham, Homi K. Bhabha, Paul de Man, Jacques Derrida,
Michel Foucault, Mahatma Gandhi, Stephen Greenblatt, David Hume,
Friedrich Nietzsche, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Gayatri Spivak. The poems
in Dandelions for Bhabha are, as the title hints, enchanting and unexpected
opportunities to philosophize art and aestheticize thought. Narratives
of miracles, refl ections on visuals, and dialogues of the dead enter the
hopes, joys, and wonders of daily living. Joseph’s skill is to narrow the gap
between the creative and the critical, and to provoke.
