cover image Pure

Pure

Carol Frost. Triquarterly Books, $10.95 (64pp) ISBN 978-0-8101-5004-1

Frost ( Chimera ) introduces this new collection, her seventh, with a ruminative poem, ``Fate,'' asking the reader to imagine fishing for trout in the twilit shadows as the mind ``learns / to drift, to take in the slightest signs, as if there's / already begun / under the surface what will come to pass.'' Fate and the natural world intersect in the book as a whole, producing exacting poems with a serious tone and a clarity of vision that, to Frost's credit, is not romanticized. The title poem, exemplary of this achievement, tells the story of a man who mistakenly shoots his son instead of a deer and ``only had left to him his pure hunter's sense, still clean / under his skin.'' Frost's mature voice, revealing the wisdom of passage, leads us along the path of experience. Her style is unnervingly close to the bone as she tackles, especially in the second part of the book, central issues like mortality, memory: ``I imagine myself in skies past this one, / for there's no one anyplace who isn't secretly / going away.'' Through her patient dissection of the mysteries of nature, she comes to conclusions that leave us with a prophetic sense of darkness. (May)