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"There are other ways
/ to fight the Adam and Eve in us, with that handy little weapon, the enchiridion,
/ a dagger against Folly to whom you otherwhere sing praises." (13)
With this thought from her poem "In this Life One Must Be On Guard," a poet who puts message on an equal footing with technique, Susan Andrews Grace begins her collection of poems, Flesh, a Naked Dress. Original sin, committed by Adam and Eve and handed down to every one of us, seems to require the Church to rid us of its ugly stain. Grace takes her chair at the table with Erasmus, Thomas Moore, and Martin Luther, the great minds of the Reformation who debated doctrine in the sixteenth century while failing to address whether or not religion was necessary. In her poetry, she invites them to come to the Kootenays and to the desert where life goes on without the rigidity and baggage religion has instilled.

Grace begins her book by appealing to sixteenth century Dutch humanist and Catholic priest Desiderius Erasmus, an illegitimate child of a man who later became a priest. While Erasmus criticized the excesses of the Roman Church, he still found its doctrine sound. Early on, he wrote a handbook to help others follow the doctrine while avoiding the excesses and later wrote The Praise of Folly, a satire dedicated to Thomas Moore, in which he illustrates the formalism of the Church and how its inflexibility detracts from the acts of true faith. In "Paternity's Question," Grace tries to convince Erasmus, using his own personal experience, that the problems in the Church are intrinsic to organized religion and cannot be solved by minor adjustments. Even after the Reformation, the excesses still exist - even today in the Kootenays, the Rockies in British Columbia - "There were priests here too / and probably fathered children like you under the lodgepoles / and woven reed roofs, they left the mothers. It happened everywhere." (15) Throughout her collection, the poet refers to the transgressions of monks and priests who vowed celibacy. "The Bishop prances behind the cross, Folly says, / ignoring his vow against carnal affection, lustily / tripping the pretty boys: he has frocked and gloved his filth." (19)

While corruption runs rampant in the Church, Grace's forests follow God's plan without the doctrine. She invites Erasmus to her forests that "shade secrets too. Where does God reside? / You'll love this Erasmus: it's rich: / all trace of human and divine erased. Here in the Kootenays / two, maybe three, generations of memory."(13). Grace isn't sure Luther's plan to reform the Church took care of the problems within it. "Fire started in the middle of the cloth / not along the torn edge, where you were bruised / tearing yourself away, trying to be faithful." (77) Admittedly, nature also possesses its share of abuses and excesses, and this is where memory is too short to feel the weight of centuries of doctrine. The grizzly eats the roots of the defenceless glacier lily in "Erythronium Grandiflorum." Nature is not without pain, and God's plan includes the intricate food chain that is necessary to the survival of the species - something that Grace warns us, "Don't look closely: you see nature better / from the corner of your eye." (38) But nature still seems to handle life better than religion, which hands us centuries of others' sins to carry. "Erasmus, had the people here stayed lost in the moon, never seen God's sun / borrowed by Christians who considered themselves greater than Christ, they would / have been saved. But God's sun was brought here." (21) We are all sinners, but how does the arrival of God's "sun," Jesus, change us? Are we better because the Church tells us how to behave when its agents misbehave? And why must we carry the burden of our sins - often created and defined by men who tell us they know what God wants? A few lines later, she again tells us that nature is better for its lack of memory, of doctrine. "It makes / no difference to the lily or the sparrow what we've done / or not done, a chasm of forgetting / swallows the trace." (21)

Grace writes about Thomas Moore as referenced by Erasmus' The Praise of Folly. She chastises Erasmus for not recognizing that Moore was in grave peril. "More's the pity / you couldn't have foreseen and forewarned the bloody end too. / And you the intellectual titan: such foolery." (17) Martin Luther fairs no better. In "Auctoritus vs. Traditio," she writes, "Luther knows the difference between papism and his invisible church for holy men, a club / Augustine most likely could not join: the true church." (51) But while Grace acknowledges Luther's contributions to Reformation, she invites him to see what it is like in the city. In "Luther in the Desert," she writes, "Evil resides outside this nursery where / a parrot talks to a child off school for Martin Luther King / Day. Evil rolls in the dust and in the nickels pulsing through / the city's capillaries, stupid machine - eyes click fruits and / numbers." (85)

When she answers Erasmus' The Praise of Folly, she includes the same playfulness that he had when he wrote it centuries ago, "Who's to believe you Erasmus, writing of such tomfoolery as / the fool who was Foolish Tom, not a Tom Fool, and tricked his wife with false jewels." (14) Thomas Moore's beliefs were serious. He did not believe that gold or jewels had the value that society put on them. But Grace seems to want Moore and the others to address another issue that the intellects of Reformation did not - original sin and its burden on women. In "Joy of the Proper Tool," Grace plays with the reader, but the meaning seems to be quite serious. "Mistakes! Look to the jimson flower / its shocking tawdriness / roadside vaginal throat / open / waves its panties at you / as you drive by / not making mistakes." (36) Who is the sinner here? The Eve who tempts Adam or the driver who judges her?

But Susan Grace also has a romantic side. She uses the beauty of the nature around her to show what happens when nature works without organized religion. It is here the reader sees the poet's passion. In "Joy of the Proper Tool," Grace moves from debate with Erasmus and weaves God into life in nature. She writes, "Spruce trees listen to stories / shroud closer / a man lost in the forest not homeless / no matter how naked." (29) The reader sees reference to both religion, as dealing with "men of the cloth" and fabric as a "shroud" that protects nature from doctrine. Grace again mentions cloth when she describes how the inevitability of life - perhaps that planning and praying do little to change it. "Lay out that intricately woven life, its warp necessity, its weft circumstance: / permeability / is like that: relentless in the way it argues / unto death."(35) Again cloth is emphasized when she writes, "grosgrain winceyette nainsook / jacquard paisley stockingett jersey / duffel nankeen corduroy / twill & moleskin dimity sharkskin / calico taffeta and moiré: foreskin - " (37) But could there be another image that Grace talks about here? Could it be the solution to the shame a woman should feel because her naked body leads to man's downfall? Is it the onus the woman must carry to atone for the sins of Eve? Grace finishes her collection with "An Event in the World." Here, she again returns to the responsibility for original sin. She writes about women from the fourth century on, warning them that they are wind and wood and that "Your growing wood penetrates, you the apple / the tree, the problem, its knowledge - / chaste or no, the same desert. Christ's coming is a kiss / given or withheld: the same you are guilty." (92)

Throughout her collection, Susan Andrews Grace creates images not only of nature but also of cloth used both to protect the wearer and to burden her. The rhythm of her words lulls the reader like the wind, and her descriptions are superb. But it is the meanings of her sometimes shocking images that made this reviewer eagerly reread the collection several times, each time understanding more references and images, realizing the depth and importance of the poet's message. Grace is open about the silliness of sixteenth century reforms and clearly finds nature in the Kootenays and the desert, where organized religion plays little role, more appealing. Just as in nature, people sustain themselves with food and interaction with others of their kind. And as such they will take what they need, not worrying about sin, or in the case of the homeless person on Decatur Boulevard or the seductive jimson flower by the highway, how it is judged by others who seem to prefer to follow the doctrine. But it is the role of Adam and Eve as the foundation of organized religion that seems to irk her the most. Whether it is a "vermillion blanket" or a "sweater of greenness" or "red silk shoes," Grace reminds us of a woman's burden when she writes "Flesh, a naked dress - / tissues sewn with bloody threads / swims in air, frantic / sinks and gives back to the sun / dry drowning." (66) Tearing away the burden of centuries is not easy. Paradise is the island where a woman lives among the flowers of her garden. Unfortunately, she must leave her paradise from time to time and it is off the island where evil resides. In "Flesh, a Naked Dress" a woman in death is finally able to shed her burden. "She leaves the mountain / in a flurry of clothing: the Good is her ethereal casing, / her idea of here. / Her feet cut by cinders from a burnt century / remind her / she is without All and One. / He will get into the boat and / she will wave to him from the sky, / impeccably naked." (69)