Home Movies of Narcissus

Rane Arroyo's fourth volume, Home Movies of Narcissus, commits itself to many sources at once: its deliberately choppy lines and series, bringing in both Spanish and English sources, allude to his Puerto Rican background and family, his status as an American gay man, his residence in the urban Midwest, and his interests in myths, movies, and major modernists like Stevens and Yeats. Forthright about his speaker's life (including ""leather/ and bare-knuckle cologne,"" and ""strangers having sex in this dying/ city"") Arroyo works in a Spanish-language tradition of larger-than-life autobiographical verse, to the point of constructing a dialogue with his imagined opposite, a cynical dream-vision of Ponce de Le""n who explains ""Any lyric is a terrible lie."" Suggesting the recent work of Reginald Shepherd, Arroyo's hyperallusive free verse and his combination of themes drive this appealing mix of ambition and insight.