cover image WAITING FOR THE PARACLETE

WAITING FOR THE PARACLETE

Lise Goett, Lisa Goett, . . Beacon, $14 (80pp) ISBN 978-0-8070-6867-0

Not quite a UP title, this debut won the Barnard New Women Poets Prize. Goett writes an "Ode to a Pair of White Gloves ("The hands suspect espionage"), tracks "The White Tiger of Vladivostok" ("It knew no lent but hunger") and "take[s] solace" in Paris lingerie: "safe in your fortress, festooned in your elaborate armor,/ ...fastenings as complex as the French legal code." If a paraclete is an intercessor of any sort (and not necessarily the Holy Spirit), then for Goett's speaker, the "the lily of the angel insinuated itself into her darkness/ with what fate and force engenders there."