cover image THE KEEP

THE KEEP

Emily Wilson, . . Univ. of Iowa, $16 (112pp) ISBN 978-0-87745-773-2

"Nothing possessed me/ but the ordinary// strain of distance/ upon natural objects... There was this/ skeleton inside me," observes the speaker in Wilson's neo-pastoral poetry. Spare, condensed grammar and impenetrable nature affirm the stripped-down speaker's estrangement: "River of steel./ River of no one becoming you." When Wilson, head of Spurwink Press, occasionally uses the first-person plural, she deftly confuses the speaker: "We are not waiting?// We are waiting?// We are the red studio?// We come just before the math?" (Sept.)