NEW HOPE INTERNATIONAL REVIEW

There are many good things to say about IN DEFENCE OF ADULTERY, the second poetry collection by Julia Copus. Like her first, THE SHUTTERED EYE, this one is a Poetry Book Society Recommendation.

Despite its rather lurid title, IN DEFENCE OF ADULTERY isn't very erotic or provocative. But much of it deals with love and personal relationships. Partly because of images culled from science, Copus succeeds in avoiding the banal and predictable. She explains her literary ideals in a poem aptly named ESSENCE:

	I want the epigram, not the epic,
	the Guiding Principles, the Rule of Three,
	the shift of continents and rise of nations
	summed up in an inky paragraph.

	wounding us, making us whole.

Imagery is clearly Copus's strength, and she has also developed a fairly relaxed, flexible, almost free lyrical diction that may border on, or turn into, blank verse, or iambic pentameter with slant rhymes and the occasional true rhyme.

Some pieces here have a rough feel, as if they were not, or not yet, quite polished and finished. And it seems to me that Copus is sometimes a little too eager to draw our attention to the (latent) meanings of metaphors and symbols in her work.

In addition, I'd like to point out that reindeer may in fact make a noise

	like the sound of cracking nuts

These are small matters, though, and I want to emphasize that Julia Copus is basically an interesting and original writer. And her lyrical gift — including a certain odd, disturbing slant which I personally rather like — will no doubt mature before long.