Description
Desire Museum is a fitting title for this artistic maze-like collection of poetry that Danielle Cadena Deulen has built. The museum is organized into four floors full of exhibits. Pieces in the exhibits explore romance, lust, memory, history, and politics through a conversation with literature of the past and personal experience of the present.
The form of some of these poems initially jars the reader like walking into an exhibit full of artifacts and signs. Should I look at this vase first or the painting on the opposite wall? Should I read the explanatory sign first? Should I read this column top to bottom, then move to the next column, or do I read left to right across both columns? The effect is intellectually stimulating. It makes you want to return to the same museum next weekend to look for details you might have missed.
At special points while unlocking the puzzle, the poet begins to speak plainly. When she does this, she reveals an undeniable sincerity. She is in conversation with you, the reader, as much as she is with John Keats and Federico García Lorca. The emotion outweighs the intellect here. It is, after all, a museum of desire.