Union: Poems

Don Share's earnest, moving first volume, Union, represents the promising next stage in so-called Southern narrative poetry. Share writes clear, well-crafted page-long poems about romance, memory and separation (""our house tocks and ticks/ like an inherited clock whose hour hand sticks""). He may, however, achieve greater recognition for longer work (like ""Pax Americana"") in which his own stories join those of Memphis, Tennessee and of the Civil War's difficult, lingering guilt: ""Where the United States ends/ and begins// The Mississippi is/ a long American wound."" Fans of Rodney Jones, say, should read Share posthaste.