Touch of the Whip

Affiliated with the Poetry Project of St. Mark's and co-founder of United Artists Books, prolific New York School poet Lewis Warsh (The Origin of the World) offers Touch of the Whip. Short, intimate, restrained prose narratives take in Georgia O'Keeffe and Alfred Steiglitz, or bereft, pill-popping lovers (""two people with our feet on the ground and hair on our heads""). Slow-paced, fragmentary verse is composed of long, unconnected declarative sentences: ""After you left, my hair turned gray in a few days// Perhaps we want to put ourselves back in the picture."" Long committed to experimental poetry, Warsh further distinguishes his varied oeuvre with this varied collection. (Sept.)