Among the Monarchs

Confessionalism meets the enigmatic juxtapositions of the prose poem in this second book by Garren (Afterworld) in this series of abstractly titled (""Analyst,"" ""Family,"" ""Figure and Ground,"" etc.), clinically detached vignettes. Each prosily long-lined poem--none shorter than seven lines or longer than 13--approaches a memory or occurrence obliquely, with a relentless understatement: ""I think about her all the time,/ partly in disbelief, partly because she is my mother. But now it's dusk."" ""My love for him? It was like the stone/ I saw the cashier wearing once. On a braided rope."" ""I walked everyday. And then one time a figure appeared, at one of the doors, waving, under the awning./ And I waved back with my life."" Perceptions of natural objects and forces modulate into descriptions of familial and erotic relations. ""The Bride,"" for instance, presents a speaker who while waiting ""for a long time"" encounters an ""animal"" who dies: ""there were no maggots. Just grass and the wind. A purity you can't imagine./ And still won't you come here with me?/ When I keep smoothing out a place beside me on the granite bench?"" Similarly, ""Family"" charts the movement from a ""world [that] felt like someone else's art"" to an anti-climactic uprising in which the speaker and her brother become ""king and queen of the abyss"" of their troubled nuclear family. The speaker's abuse, institutionalization, abortion, recovery, familial estrangement and marriage are variously evoked. The pieces are well-structured, and produce their effects with a sometimes grim efficiency. But, if overly mannered, they also leave room for a hard-won humor, and for discovery, which is often enough to win indulgence. (Sept.)