Luca: Discourse on Life and Death (INSCRIBED COPY)
by: Rochelle Owens

Softcover. San Diego, Junction Press, 1st, 2001, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 220 pages. A veteran of the New York avant-garde still best remembered for her rebellious '60s play Futz, Owens resurrects the painter Leonardo da Vinci; two of his models, Flora and Mona (Lisa); his student Salia; and Luca, his teacher. Luca is given the poem's near-omniscient "I"; the piece as a whole is less concerned with the biographical Leonardo than with the physical, social and emotional circumstances of representative creation and the elaboration of sexual expression in portraits. To this end there are many descriptions of women's bodies that are spat back at the reader-as-observer in colloquial bursts. INSCRIBED BY OWENS on the half-title page. Clean copy.