Performing scripted narratives in rhyming verse, the artist — with her husband Patrick Kelley and various family members — explores historical periods
through fictitious characters such as nurses, soldiers, prostitutes, and saltimbanques.
The alternative to this
fictitious ordering of life is made concrete in The Public Burning
through the
character of the Phantom, that «mysterious fearsome force,» to quote Uncle Sam, «which from time immemorious has menaced the peace and security of mankind and buggered the hopes of the holy» (p. 335).