Juliet Huddy Leg

Few first books of the last decade have attempted such a delicate challenge as this one. A subtle variation on Romeo and Juliet, Deer Table Legs is multicultural in the widest, most generous use of that term. Sometimes locating her poems in the Iran of her birth, Katayoon Zandvakili tells more than one kind of love story here in narrative filled with irony and tenderness. In "The Boy and the Girl, " the face of the beloved is "the kind of face that sits well by the fireplace, / listens late into the night, wears the sleeve of years" But in "Jerkfish, " "Your face came into mine / with the brilliance of teeth, loud water promises." With titles as enigmatic and illusive as those of Wallace Stevens, these poems verge on the dreamlike but hold always to a dramatic clarity.

Originally a tragedy by William Shakespeare published in quarto in 1957, the characters of Romeo and Juliet have been depicted in literature, music, dance, and theatre. The appeal of the young hero and heroine - whose families the Montagues and Capulet, respectively, are implacable enemies -is such that they have become, to the popular imagination, the representative type of star-crossed lovers. They are sincere, kind, brave, loyal, virtuous, and desperately in love, and their tragedy is greater because of their innocence. The feud between the lovers' families represents the fate which Romeo and Juliet are powerless to overcome. The lines capture in poetry the youthful and simple passion, which characterizes the play. Shakespeare set the scene in Verona. Italy during July. Juliet, a Capulets, and Romeo, a Montague, fall in love when Romeo visits her at her private balcony in her family's home. Because the two noble families are enemies, the couple is married secretly by Friar Laurence. When Tybalt, a Capulet, kills Romeo's friend Mereutio in a quarrel, Romeo kills Tybalt and is banished to Mantua. Juliet's father insists on her marrying Count Paris, and Juliet goes to consult the friar. He gives her a potion that makes a person appear dead. He proposes that she take it and that Romeo rescue her. She complies, unaware of the friar's scheme, Romeo returns to Verona on hearing of Juliet's apparent death. He encounters Paris, kills him, and finds Juliet in the burial vault. He gives her a last kiss and kills himself with poison. Juliet awakens, sees the dead Romeo, and kills herself. The families learn what has happened and end their feud.