Entire Dilemma: Poems

The devastation of alcoholism and the loneliness of sobriety, the demands of death and memory and the challenges of language itself all find their way into Burkard's sixth collection, following 1990's diaristic My Secret Boat. Poems like ""The Summer After Last"" brilliantly strike a balance between melancholy lyricism and Burkard's customary imagistic candor: ""I do not want to belabor invisibility,/ but if it isn't there in the spaces/ among the people as a spiritual thread/ then I do not want to be there either.// Sea or no sea, house or not."" If not actually addressed to friends or lovers, the poems often call and respond to half-present figures, as Burkard haltingly revises relationships, building to a quietly impassioned pitch: ""I am thinking about planets in orbit. Lives orbiting other lives. Insatiable."" Such internal ruminations are interrupted by descriptions of colorful characters (""Mr. Nobody,"" ""Mel,"" ""The Boy Who Had No Shadow"") who provide comic--if surreally violent--relief. Other poems in Burkard's more ruminative mode can be too abrupt, hitting the page in angular chunks (""[Y]ou were there./ They said so, you agreed.// You left/ to see// if you could know her from afar"") that are often less than self-justifying. Still, such moments seem intended to mirror life's fragmented successes and failures (especially in the more harrowing narratives), and give the snatches of lyricism a deeply sweet plausibility. (Sept.)