Jennifer Moore's debut collection takes its title from a bullfighting
technique in which the matador draws the bull with his cape; in these
poems, however, traditional moves are reconfigured and roles are
subverted. In a broader sense, the word "veronica" (from the Latin vera,
or "true" and the Greek eikon, or "image") functions as a frame for
exploring the nature of visual experience, and underscores a central
question: how do we articulate events or emotions that evade clear
understanding? In order to do so, the figures here perform all manner of
transformations: from vaudeville star to cartoonist's daughter, from
patron saint to "Blue-Eyed Torera; " they are soothsayers, apothecaries,
curators, often conjuring selves out of thin air. This dilating and
"shape-shifting" of perspective becomes a function of identity: "the
absorber and the absorbed become one." Indeed, both speaker and listener
must be crafted-willed into being-by each other ("Be your own maestro"),
and are apparitions until then. Through a flick of the wrist or a trick
of the eye, these speakers understand that construction of a self comes
only through performance of that self--which performances are often
punctuated with a wink, an unswerving gaze, or both at once.
