The Nervous Filaments

Lee's fourth book is hard to interpret, but hard to ignore: “a priest shouldn't have a tattoo of Darth Vader,” the title poem remarks, before depicting “little silver penguins holding trays.” Exclamatory, vivid, bizarre, and sometimes redolent of the surrealists, Lee's single-line stanzas and sentence fragments suggest a life impossible to sustain, a set of emotions and recollections unmoored from any life story that might serve as guide: “They shredded the moon again she said about the falling snow.” Lee remains conscious of region and locale (“just think of the Midwest/ as a giant Nativity Scene”): yet his ambitions, and his targets, seem to take in almost everything he can see. A style that some readers find disorienting will seem to others all too familiar; it's not clear whether his disorienting style is really anything new. And yet Lee's sharp way with single images, single sentences, almost convulsively fleeting visions, should not be denied. (Mar.)