cover image NOVA

NOVA

Standard Schaefer, . . Sun & Moon, $10.95 (105pp) ISBN 978-1-55713-404-2

By turns bizarre, scorching, trendy and lovable, Schaefer's National Poetry Series–winning debut takes some of its bearings from the language writing of the '70s and '80s and jostles among their more recent, more lyrical and often racier heirs. Of these three sequences, "Fort" inches and backtracks toward a vivid, almost Faulknerian portrayal of spaces along the Mexico-U.S. border, "where Aunts are obvious," Spanish is spoken and "there's a new south rising against the sliding glass/ of a dead language." "Ovalness" attacks the modern economy with its roles of "employer" and "occupant," and cryptically warns "The bald one—/ will turn out badly." By far the longest sequence, "Nova Suite" interleaves angels, birds, cars, highways, "paper doilies," particle physicists, "atoms of a lost identity" and a web of mock-academic footnotes. Schaefer's title invokes at once America's nuclear program and its automobile industry, whose products behave like chemical elements—"Saturns or Plymouths are inert," while a Chevy Nova (Spanish for "doesn't go") may bear cosmic dangers. The first two, shorter sequences are by far the stronger work here, and may be the most recently written. If so, they presage further lyrical damage to come. (Aug. 10)