What the Darkness Proposes: Poems

Like a handsome stranger spotted from across a dimly lit room, this book at first holds promise of being mysterious and deep. The cryptic opening poem, ""For a Child of Seven, Taken by the Jesuits,"" moves between worlds of knowledge and innocence(""The little criminal is seized and shaken/ Like a globe of snow""). But by as early as the third poem, ""Victoria's Secret,"" the lights have come up to reveal a shallow arena of light verse, resplendent with end rhyme and iambic feet that force archaic structure and unneeded prepositions upon the poet's lines. A typical stanza, from a very lengthy meditation of a trip to a writer's colony, begins, ""A cup of coffee, then a second/ Which I take back into my study./ By now I've pretty much awakened,/ I'm sitting at my writing table/ With pencils sharpened, notebook ready:/ `Baker, Baker, this is Able...'"" There is wit here, but it is squandered on the kind of overweaning obviousness one hears in the middle of a blind date going badly. (Oct.)