SOURCE: "The Workings of Chance and Memory," in The Women's Review of Books, Vol. XI, Nos. 10-11, July, 1994, p. 31.

[In the following favorable review, Russell examines the themes and structure of The Angel of History.]

With her latest collection, The Angel of History, Carolyn Forché proves once again that socially conscious poetry is not a contradiction in terms. When her first collection, Gathering the Tribes, won the coveted Yale Younger Poets prize in 1976, she was praised by Stanley Kunitz for the quality of her imagination, "at once passionate and tribal." Kunitz seems to be referring to Forché's empathic gift to see her way into other lives. Although these early poems document a connection to her own Slovak ancestry, they demonstrate as well a concern that moves beyond the boundaries of a particular family or cultural heritage toward a more global frame of reference. This global view is...