In his eagerly awaited second book, Hawkey (The Book of Funnels
) continues to delve into surreal landscapes and word-bending sentences to create playful poems that entertain while also seeking orientation and stability in an imaginary world that mirrors the real one all too well. In an almost always deadpan tone, and usually in uneven columns or narrow couplets, Hawkey repurposes animals ("A horseshoe crab is a beautiful helmet"), relates natural and human phenomena ("pardon my shoulders,/ they shake when I laugh,/ the way the tip of a ship's mast/ records, for no one—not even the sky—/ the contours of a given wave") and notes the precariousness of everyday life ("I tried to move the hole/ but there was another hole/ beneath it, which I fell through,/ over and over"). Poems with the word "hour" in the title, spread throughout the collection, portray slices of unusual life: "Drainage/ occurs, in real time." Though they sometimes fizzle out at the end, there is much that is interesting in every one of these poems. (Apr.)
