cover image THE SECONDS

THE SECONDS

Linda Bierds, . . Putnam, $25 (96pp) ISBN 978-0-399-14797-5

In the long opening poem of this finely worked sixth book from Bierds (The Profile Makers), a Spanish king finds operatic relief from the pain of time's passing: "my castrato sings one aria's notes, year after year." Castrati, royalty, measurement and time figure throughout the book, as do well-researched period properties and visual details. A poem about the mapmaker Mercator depicts "the eyelash inkings of continents"; another about a European painter includes a Renaissance "pharmacopoeia": "Oil of earthworm. Oil of ox hoof./ Saliva of a fasting man." Loaded with objects as they are, Bierds's poems can grow almost claustrophobic, and her sometimes melodramatic speakers can be hard to tell apart—her Zelda Fitzgerald, her Louis Pasteur and her version of Kafka sound enticing, but oddly alike. Bierds is at her worst when her protagonists are quite famous (Vermeer; Kafka), at her best when they are obscure or invented—a poem about lacemakers shines through its sharp melodrama, and "Concentration" (about a bizarre hobbyist) brings to life its "egg-sized ship... and the lightbulb that enfolds it." Fans of Lucie Brock-Broido, Alice Fulton, Albert Goldbarth or Gjertrud Schnackenberg will find Bierds's methods and personae familiar, and her execution unfailingly competent. (Nov.)