Zinc Fingers: Poems from A to Z

Sonnets, villanelles, sestinas and even a concrete poem reminiscent of May Swenson rub shoulders in Meinke's 12th collection, arranged alphabetically by title. Unfortunately, the occasions that engender these formal variations fail to yield fresh diction or insight. Take for example the sonnet ""Circe,"" in which the temptress is described in rhyming couplets that faintly recall Hecht's equally problematic ""Dover Bitch"": ""Her breasts were small and tight/ shoulders round Her thighs (we all could see) were white:/ in short her attributes were fine/ and we turned tipsily into swine."" Akin to a poet like James Broughton, there is usually a playful quality to Meinke's rhymes, as in the opening stanza of ""Grandfather at the Pool"": ""Now that I'm old/ respectable and white and pink/ you tease like bold/ hotblooded courtesans who think/ old men prefer thin beer to drink."" But this is the kind of verse that modernity seems to have passed by. At other times, Meinke, whose new and selected Liquid Paper appeared in 1992, seems downright sophomoric, as in a poem like ""Making Love with the One,"" where a ""one armed girl"" made love to in a library is mirrored by a one-lined stanza at the center of the poem. Meinke's speaker is better off in a poem like ""The Waltz,"" which meanders down the page in musically descriptive tercets: ""So we turn one last time/ more or less in tune/ across the pockmarked floor:// Scarecrows on the moon."" (Aug.)