Everything Preserved: Poems 1955-2005

Everson, who makes his book-length debut in his 70's as winner of the Poetry Foundation's Emily Dickinson first book award, swapped poems with a young Jack Spicer and John Ashbery, then stopped writing for 43 years until a recent creative outburst. This volume-divided into two sections, one for nine poems written between 1955 and 1960, and the other comprising the remaining 66, written since 2003-quickly establishes the charms of the playful early work, as in a poem that describes ""at least twenty deer"" driven by famine to graze on the speaker's pillow and other ""poor, unfamiliar pastures."" There is a plainspoken, aphoristic strangeness at the heart of many of these early poems-set to subtle music. ""The perfect form of woman is a ghost,"" Everson writes in his last and most ambitious early piece, ""The Little Ghost I Played With."" The recent work is much more uneven-though much of it has been published in major literary magazines-and there are still plenty of pleasures to be found. Everson evokes the ordinary with a continually surprising touch: percussive language evokes longing for a deceased lover (""I'll take your long legs and / the afterthought of thunderstorms / or sex all day rolled up""); a lemon tree in Eden ""hides the smell / of new babies""; and a space probe begets thoughts on onions and innocence. ""I am / written on thoroughly, a lost novel / found again,"" Everson writes, as if starting an autobiography, then turns unexpectedly: ""I remember the predictable plot too late, / realize the silly sad urgency of moss.""