(40)ff.
Found photographs and text are sewn together in order to speak to speaking
itself. The photographs all show women's faces, in each instance somehow
manipulated, fragmented, or otherwise distorted—essentially silenced. Each one
concludes an aphorism on "correct" speech, from "The Central
Idea" to "Story" to "Combinations," all of which
articulate assumptions of rightness and etiquette (and subservience) that
condition women's voices in politics, the workplace, and daily life. The
alternative, as stated in the first section, is violence: "Almost all
normal persons will dominate or kill because of fear." The fear is, of
course, that women might be correct after all. Kokin suggests a solution at her
final section, "Never Read Poetry," by which, of course, she means
the opposite; read, and write, poetry in order to address the unspoken and
unspeakable. A playful and profound approach, bound in wrappers and held in
found lozenge tin. Fine.