cover image Rough Music

Rough Music

Deborah Digges. Alfred A. Knopf, $20 (0pp) ISBN 978-0-679-44176-2

Digges (Late in the Millennium) entwines ancient ritual with contemporary life in beautifully complex poems characterized by intricacy of syntax and richness of theme and idea. In ``In-House Harvest,'' a poem about organ transplant, she envisions ``...the arc of the stone tool/ thrown through history,/ delivered, shining, in the surgeon's hand.'' The masterful ""Rock Scissors Paper,"" a sprung sestina, juxtaposes the thoughts and words of Freud, Marx and Darwin, along with words from the Bible, lyrics from children's songs and other sources. Digges writes a learned, often densely allusive verse, but her first-person voice gathers emotion when she turns to the intimate terrain of her loves, her memories and her own body. The poems near the end of the volume approach autobiography. Seven of the poems are illuminated by notes at the back of the book; helpful and absorbing in their own right, these references and explanations may help readers approach the other, unannotated works. All of the poems deserve-and amply reward-the reader's careful attention. (Aug.)