The Colors of Infinity

Axinn ( Against Gravity ) addresses many of the same themes that have occupied his previous collections--love, death, the physical and metaphysical aspects of the universe--with a wide-eyed, appreciative simplicity that welcomes us into each poem. Once inside the poet's world, however, the reader will likely be disappointed by his unremarkable insights. ``The Orphan'' contemplates the emotional precariousness of a child's world: ``Love can abandon, / the pain and destruction / tearing, cataclysmic.'' The poems about nature have a cliched, greeting-card quality to them. In ``Encounter with an Old Friend,'' the poet enjoys a brief meeting with a chipmunk: ``I would have offered him eternal friendship / And the place of honor in my heart and home.'' On the other hand, two poems about the poet's dead father are particularly resonant reflections on the loss of a cherished guiding influence. Axinn, himself a pilot, deals in several poems both with the worldly pleasures of plane flight and the supernatural implications of traveling through air: ``We do hang / onto some wave to the outer edge / of the Big Bang / perhaps we will learn more about / God.'' (Dec.)