AustLit

'In third body, Marion May Campbell interrogates the porous boundaries between the self and the other, as well as the incongruous inconsistencies between the self and the self. Thus, in “incipient foredune” (71-89), “our devastating need / to kill the other in each other” is seen to be “murder of all desire” (83). As lovers, we so often want everything in the beloved that we are not, and yet we so often seek only to see ourselves in the other. The bonds that bind us together may become restrictive. In the opening poem, “passing” (3-12), the speaker asks: “what kind of history / & what kind of witness / is possible / when Inever coincides with me” (5)? If Iis the acting first person subject, then meis the first person object acted on: it is the difference between perpetrator and victim, saviour and saved, or leader and follower. Campbell negotiates such binaries with finesse, showing an astounding gift for figurative language.' (Introduction)