cover image Facts for Visitors: Poems

Facts for Visitors: Poems

Srikanth Reddy. University of California Press, $18.95 (62pp) ISBN 978-0-520-24044-5

If mid-century mannerist verse seemed to take a hiatus after the '60s, its retooled comeback continues in Facts for Visitors by Srikanth Reddy. The destination is a familiar place that features at least eight Dantean ""Circles,"" the first of which contains the apostrophe ""We have done no wrong,/ my friends, & yet we find ourselves soiled,/ sold, carbonized teeth in a moss-riven jar."" How to break out? ""When it gets lonely, I sit by the river & read. Correction. There is no river. Mostly, I read.""