One of the most striking features in this collection is the author's use of sarcasm, cynicism and humor to describe both common occurrences, such as the breaking down of an automobile, or common experiences, like the idea of growing older. Mixing these three elements allows Janowitz to seriously examine ideas while poking fun at the details; even if the poems do not propel the reader to contemplate such intangibles as death, they are valuable because they are entertaining. Although Janowitz's humor and sarcasm can be found throughout the collection, one of the works I found most enjoyable was "Liberty." In "Liberty," Janowitz has created a character that appears to be older, perhaps mentally deteriorating or handicapped, and is living in a mental institution or nursing home. The home is described as a "ship for the mentally dull, for the numb, for the null." This image is anything but kind to the home's inhabitants, but it could also imply that the people being described aren't mentally ill, but boring. Janowitz is cyncial as she looks at the fact that the people in the instituion are locked away; the people living in the home "have choosen this life of your own violition, although your eyes were baked, and your mouth taped shut." Looking at the daily life of these people, Janowitz uses sarcasm, she decribes the things they may do to pass time like games, "There are infinite ways of passing go," but "there are books behind locked glass doors." The image of inaccessible books is used both for humor and to show the limits the people in the home have placed on them. At the end of the poem, "You can sprinkle arsenic on the lettuce - divorce - remember this: the possibilities are not limitless. They are yours." It's not actually clear if Janowitz is suggesting the patients should kill themselves, or perhaps the peopel taking care of them. The limitless possibilities could also be irnoic or cynical in nature: here are patients restricted in a place where even the books are locked behind glass, how could the possibilities be limitless? This coudl be a reference to back to the arsenic and death, the possibilities for escape are endless through killing oneself.

Janowitz's volume is easily one of the most remarkable I've read. What some might term cynicism typifies Visiting Rites; I'd call it unfailing wit in the face of realism. In this volume, aging becomes a strip tease, and the mind, an "aerial acrobat" wanting to kill its "drugged slug" of a body; Cheerleaders cheer on the speaker's failing health by chanting elegies outside the window. Here, Janowitz's speakers flout conventional wisdom, and again and again extract some hard gem of truth from its tatters in even the most mundane of situations, calling small talk "whizzing combustible words" finding "compensations for blood gone thin" and realizing that "the possibilities are not endless. They are yours." Moreover, Janowitz's imagination is rivaled only by her skill in craft: in these poems, she achieves impressive aural acrobatics with lines such as "Humpty-Dumpty bounces on his wall / in the sky, high on the timeliest twaddling tunes / and worlds may break to bits, worlds may be reglued." Visiting Rites is a most amazing book; though its out of print, if you can get a copy, it's more than worth the trouble.