Things and Flesh

Starting from heartbreak and moving towards devotion, Gregg's fifth book of poems continues a project of formidable lyrical sincerity. Gregg (Chosen by the Lion) remains prompted by terrible disappointments, romantic and otherwise: sometimes she finds solace in Kafkaesque precision, announcing, ""it is enough... that the arrow fit/ exactly into the wound it makes."" Often Gregg's passion and desolation send her to the language of religion: ""Surely the people God loves most,/ and trusts more, are passionate,"" she proclaims without irony. Her unswerving attentions become a kind of prayer: ""There is a flower. We call it God./ It closes and opens and dies./ We still call it God."" Gregg likes to insist on the divine nature of erotic love, even on the divinity of failed romance. She brings these preoccupations to her travel poems, from the mountains of Greece to the back roads of Arkansas, lonesome journeys broken up by fleeting visions of joy, such as ""the young men [who] ride their horses fast/ on the wet sands of Pangaritis."" Along with these poems of observation and locale, tributes to poets like George Oppen and Joseph Brodsky keep the volume from being what might otherwise seem self-absorbed. In the end, Gregg asks whether ""passion adds size/ but allows too much harm,"" then celebrates ""poems of time/ now and time then, each/ containing the other carefully."" (Oct.)