The Theme of Tonight's Party Has Been Changed

It's hard to believe that Roeser's sprawling and uninterrupted third collection (after In the Truth Room) consists of only eleven poems. In each, the mind darts compulsively between its preoccupations, combining these concerns as if to suggest that motherhood sentences women to relive their adolescence%E2%80%94wise now but put on mute. A daughter "flies/ over me like Evel Knievel. Like I'm just an/ aggravating mattress in// the road." When watching your own bad decisions borne out in front of you, what is there to do but confess and try again, as the opening poem says "I'm just a messed-up/ person trying to live// on a spiritual basis." Rather than arriving at a solidified view of the self, these poems enact the often painful reality that we are the sum of our choices, and little more. "I never knew who I was%E2%80%94// this truth has to be/ told each morning. I// wake in the dark/ trying to assemble// a lexicon,/ to make a coherent// line." Beginning and ending with petitions to a higher power, this collection sends up an honest prayer, pleading that for the ones we love, everything will turn out all right. (Apr.)