Laura Kasischke, poet as novelist

Hi fellow lovers of that fading art of literature...recently I've read two novels by Laura Kasischke, who came to the artists' colony (Ragdale) I directed many years ago.  Back then, she was (and still is) a somewhat Gothic poet.  Now she has seven novels in print, and as a person overly trained in story (the kind of bad movie companion who knows how the plot is going to unfold five minutes into the action), I find her novels delightfully weird and surprising.

Laura thinks in images, like a poet.  Her world is the world of the family and the suburbs, her protagonists somewhat wistful, yearning, middle aged women who either find some new passion or are discovered by someone else's passion.  Page after page pops with unusual images -- blood on snow, deer hair protruding from crumpled fenders, a collapsed casserole...I'm not exactly sure how she makes it all work, but I'm left pondering moments, meditating on ideas that manifest themselves in strange creepy ways, how one's house is both a sanctuary and a prison.  Weird, evocative, and, of course, Midwestern.  Read  "In A Perfect World," or "Be Mine."