Winter Sex

Locating ""The Epithet Epic,"" ""A New Way to Love,"" ""Sympathy and Envy"" and ""The Emotion and Pleasure of Love"" in Winter Sex, Katy Lederer channels classical personae, like an unnamed Odysseus, and puts them in arresting, even scary, positions: ""The scar on his thigh is newly healed. Let's not see it just yet let's see Both of their bodies illuminated in a uniform fashion."" In the cold, even light of this collection, the speaker and the characters she conjures are, as ""In Las Vegas,"" ""Interesting. I love you is like sitting on a bench and you don't mean it when you say it. Someone else has made you say it."" (June)