Blue in Green

Elliott (California Winter League) gorgeously personifies nature and everyday things in her atmospheric latest. In “When I Was a Wave,” she writes: “I was willing to drink anything./ I found myself out gazing at stars./ The fishnets—/ I played them like harps”—that poem ends with “Let me tell you a story: I loved./ The days passed./ I sang the same old songs./ I left. I came back.” Elsewhere, as in “The Winter Mirror,” the objects are more mundane (“One day, we watch the laundry: a neon frock/ sings itself an aria in the flood”) and abstract presences are given concrete forms (“the angels/ are blue glass bottles.”) Some poems are shadowed by cancer and loss, which doesn’t prevent them from glittering with life. Ekphrastic poems in the collection describe modern jazz songs, such as “Composition No. 311” (“I am the bluest/ blue, I am the coat,/ I am the shoe./ Do you often/ know what to do?/ Maybe this is a test for you”) and “Composition No. 152” (“Maybe the song is a fluke,/ or maybe it means a dramatic view,/ or it drinks from the lake and tells something/ truetrue”). Elliott offers beauty and surprise at every turn. (Aug.)