A Better Life

Mann (Proprietary) examines sexuality, race, and personal and public history in this meditative fifth collection characterized by nostalgia, grief, and surprising juxtapositions. From “Mickey Mouse” Florida to Anita Bryant’s 1978 San Francisco, poems like “Fifty Years After Stonewall” evoke the changes: “You girl me/ in the virtual/ hallway,/ like a friend / A lover./ Clever/ as this phone.” Easy yet startling rhymes propel short lines forward, some one or two words each, while other poems use longer lines and repetitive forms—sestina and pantoum, or loose versions of such—to grapple with obsession, humiliation, and pain. “Beginning and Ending with a Line by Michelle Boisseau” repeats this cry: “What kind of end of the world is this, / with no new poems from you?” If experience is life, the title poem, based on one by Julio Cortázar, wonders what could be next. But while the Cortázar poem is playful, turning back age with a thought game while acknowledging its reality, Mann clings to the game as if struggling not to succumb. His poems stay afloat along the line between sound and sense, as if it were not clear what the better life might be. (Apr.)