The Governor of Desire: Poems

The finest poems in Morgan's ( Parties ) second collection are those about family life, particularly the relationship between mother and daughter. This is a mother who, being told by a fortune teller that she would ``see the world,'' glued ``maps of the world to the wall / of our dining room.'' Morgan describes everyday, run-of-the-mill experiences with such an eye for detail that most readers would recognize this particular mother if she walked into a room. We'd know the room, too: Morgan's voices explicitly evoke sound and smell. They delight in the Southern landscape, and explore the ways nature resembles humanity. One wonderfully sensual poem contrasts autumn's drought that places the forests in danger with the almost-50 female speaker's dryness and willingness to abandon herself to the body's fire. A few pieces hover at the borders of form--rhymed quatrains, a villanelle on anger. Given all Morgan's ability, it is distressing that the focal point of the collection is an extremely weak sequence about various governors, past and present, who lust after women like dirty old men. Despite implications in the final poem about people who ``crave disaster'' and will always need governors, the metaphor here is too simple to be meaningful. (Oct.)