The Book of Things

A chair "slightly confused from the noises of centuries," a cake of soap that smiles "like a dog," and a loquaciously hermaphroditic tapeworm take their places among the "things" that speak and are spoken for in the eminent Slovenian poet Steger's English-language debut. Naming each poem for a household object, body part, or animal ("Jelly," "Bandage," "Sea Horse," "Cocker Spaniel," "Toothpick"), Steger finds causes for hope and for despair: watching a pupa, the poet asks, "Isn't it insignificant, the likelihood/ That one day we will fly away?" Steger more often prefers the earthy, the melodramatic or the grotesque: "Windshield Wipers" are "Like two serfs in black rubber boots./ They get up to go immediately back to bed." The prolific poet Henry renders Steger's long lines in an unfailingly fluent American English. Steger's efforts sometimes bring to mind such Western European figures as Francis Ponge and Craig Raine, who also sought to make household things look new and strange. Yet Steger brings a melancholy Central European sense of history—his objects tend to remember, or cause, great pain: "It pours, this poisonous, sweet force," Steger writes of "Saliva," "Between teeth, when you spit your own little genocide." (Nov.)