Double Reckoning of Christopher Columbus

Hyett ( In Evidence: Poems of the Liberation of Nazi Concentration Camps ) here selects entries from the reconstructed log of Columbus's first voyage and provides a commentary in the form of a series of 20-line lyric set pieces. These lyrics have power and suggestive force, but are mistaken in their avowal to ``renew the myth of discovery'' by laying speculation on top of what seem (as quoted) to be seldom more than merest jottings. An erotic lyric on the ``young widow'' governing one of the Canary Islands (``Her breasts are cordoned and bound. / He is like haze waiting to lift as he slips / between two worlds'') seems to be based on nothing more than her sharing the same name, Beatriz, as Columbus's mistress on the mainland. While something in Hyett's rich maritime imagery recalls Melville, there is too little myth to hang it on. The Columbus she raises is a morally aloof mystic and strong, silent type: ``The ship beneath him pitches and heaves. But he / stands firm . . .'' This figure contains no suggestion of the earthly ambition, egomania or plain vice that inhabit most modern readings of the discoverer's character, while the morally ambivalent conquest which that character prefigures seems entirely outside of this work's vision. (Apr.)