Desiring Flight Poems by Christianne Balk. Purdue Univ. Press, $12.95 paper. Reviewed by David Daniel. Among the many pleasures of Christianne Balk’s Desiring Flight, two stand out. First, Balk has — as she showed in her Walt Whitman Award-winning Bindweed — a biologist’s precise knowledge of the natural world, and consequently her poems convey, at…
GHOST LETTERS Poems by Richard McCann. Alice James Books, $9.95 paper. Reviewed by Rafael Campo. A dear patient of mine, a poet himself, who died not too long ago from complications of AIDS, once explained to me why he spent so much of his precious time and energy writing. “My poems are in a sense…
Devolution of the Nude Poems by Lynne McMahon. David R. Godine, Publisher, $12.95 paper. Reviewed by David Daniel. The best works in Lynne McMahon’s Devolution of the Nude seem like found poems, unlikely jewels turned up in some nearby but rarely visited garden of the mind. The freshness of her language provides both delight and…
In poem after poem in Giacometti's Dog, Robin Becker's third book, there is a courage in the piercing details that keeps the work from flinching from feeling and avoids even a trace of self-indulgence. These poems, generous in their emotional and geographical range, speak in Becker's voice about loss, guilt, erotic yearning, and the journey…
In a way, Disturbing the Peace bears a special relation to Yates's early t.b. ward stories — "Out With The Old," "No Pain Whatsoever," and "Thieves" (published here for the first time) — I guess to the extent the "affliction" of the protagonist can only be questioned in impersonally moral terms: the unafflicted are merely…
The poem of Gilgamesh, recreated by David Ferry from the thirtieth-century B.C. epic which is itself a retelling of an older Sumerian text, is best known by most readers for a tale of the Flood, complete with Sumerian Noah, that parallels Genesis. But the full narrative is a more troubling, darker story of a stormy-hearted…
Robert Stone's highly-praised first novel, A Hall of Mirrors, told of a down-and-out alcoholic radio announcer named Rheinhardt, of his doomed affair with a touching slattern named Geraldine, and of his involvement with ultra right wing politics. Good as it was, there were major flaws with that first work. For one thing, the story, couched…
Glass, Irony, and God Poems by Anne Carson. New Directions, $14.00 paper. Reviewed by Liam Rector. Poet and editor James Laughlin, publisher of New Directions, is still acquiring poetry that is importantly new, poetry that still sets and extends new directions. Again taking up the battle cry of his essential mentor, Ezra Pound, Laughlin has…
Domestic Work Poems by Natasha Trethewey. Graywolf Press, $12.95 paper. Reviewed by Kevin Young. In a voice confident, diverse, and directed, Natasha Trethewey’s Domestic Work does what a first book should, and more, all while avoiding what first books often do — either borrowing themes from other poets or recycling a narrow vision of family…
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