In The Oval Hour Kathleen Peirce addresses the vulnerability of language-which is to say the vulnerability of our reality-when we are in extreme states of desire and loss, especially erotic desire and erotic loss. Central to the book is its series of "e;Confessions,"e; twenty formally similar poems that contend with the Confessions of Saint Augustine."e;Passing through innocence, I came either to experience / or guilt, or they came to me, displacing innocence"e;: these luminous poems explore the generation and overlapping of carnal and metaphysical identities.
