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 reflect 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.