Door

In this vivid 11th collection (after Spell), Lauterbach’s careful diction ranges from plain speech to densely packed sound collages. “I wish to be clear,” she writes, but “I object/ to the literal.” Elsewhere, she claims “words are like small magnets,/ pulling other words toward them.” The eponymous door recurs throughout: “Tenuous, the wire or thread, or single line/ drawn across, edge to edge,// or down to the wedge between/ frame and floor, like a slip of moonlight.” Lauterbach brilliantly demonstrates how words have mutable meanings, as when a “slip” (a garment to be worn) is reframed as an exit: “The southern sky has turned peachy./ I would like to wear it out tomorrow/ as a slip. And so slip/ through a hole in the sky.” As well, the poet portrays consciousness as “filmic,” full of appearances and disappearances, and tinged by an underlying sadness: “I/ went through hoping to greet you/ on the dark side.” These perceptive entries offer a captivating reflection on the range of inner landscapes and the powers of language. (Mar.)