Desert Angel

[David]

I consider "Desert Angel" Stevie's one unassailable masterpiece, her grandest summing up of the ineffable crystal vision. It is her Yeatsian "widening gyre," her uncanniest misprision yet of all visions of Hell (compare her "great huge beast" with the "rough beast" of "The Second Coming"), & it ranks with the greatest of them. Tolstoy, Kafka,
Dante, de Mautrillard -- they're all here, & inseparable.